reporter: jose, good morning. well, we had a tornado warning about two hours ago just south of gainesville in marion county, and we are, of course, under that tornado watch that s going through 3:00 p.m. local time. so that s what s worrying authorities here, the tornado watch for most of central florida. we got a lot of wind and a lot of rain overnight. obviously the dangers here are different than those where you re at on the coast where the storm surge is what s been worrying authorities. county authorities say they ve already had reports of falling trees in some part of the county, and also there s power outages. we ve seen these power outages that have been reported all across the state, jose, more than 250,000 customers affected. here it s about 15,000 customers last i checked. that s about 10% of customers in the county here that have been affected, and authorities want people to wait, even though conditions have improved somewhat here, we ve seen some residents come outside and take a look at the conditions, jose, and what you see if you go
Like this, even something that is more than 110 years unusual. reporter: no, it s true, jose. i ll tell you this from talking to people in crystal river where you are. there are people that have lived there, a lot of people have second homes, but i actually saw the fear in their eyes. usually sometimes floridians i m a floridian, you are, they can cavalier about certain storms. but they were actually worried about this one. they went to bed, it was a category 3, when they woke up it was a category 4, and there were tornado warnings going off in the area where you and i were staying overnight. we do know the governor of florida ron desantis has been taking time off the campaign trail. but the reality is as you know, there s only so much you can prepare, right? hurricanes, natural disasters, they expose vulnerabilities in the system and right now what we re going to see here, the test is the water. how far does it go? how high does it get, and the people who didn t evacuate, can they get to safety?
Outside here in gainesville is a lot of branches all over the place from the trees that have obviously fallen. this is an area with lots of trees. i should also say the university of florida is here, the university played a big role preparing students as the hurricane made its way through florida. it s fairly quiet. we still have wind coming through and a little bit of rain with of course the worst part of the storm already making its way north. but authorities telling people to be careful when they go outside here if they see fallen trees, and of course, jose, for the possibility of damage to the power lines that, of course, can be dangerous as these power crews are making their way through the states to make those repairs that are necessary, jose. guad venegas in gainesville, i thank you so very much as we were chatting with guad, you know, the weather just changed in a second. it just started pouring. and that just shows you that these wind gusts and these
Winds through the rest of the afternoon and evening. savannah 76, charleston 71. that s enough to knock down trees and to have power outages. on top of that, if we get those strongest winds around 8:00 to 8:30, we could be dealing with significant storm surge. as of now, the national weather service in charleston is calling for the 11th highest water level. if it s stronger than that it would be top ten. that s a big deal for the charleston area. this is the rainfall forecast. we re getting concerned with areas of inland in south carolina especially, you could see up to about seven inches of rain. tornados, storm surge, still people losing power, jose, ask of course because of that onshore wind where you guys are located, this storm surge that you re looking at and you guys are standing in, it s not going anywhere anytime san. high tide where you are isn t until this afternoon. so even though the storm surge may be starting to come down, high tide s coming up. that water is going to sit there and linger, even though the
Different streams of the hurricane are very much a part of the florida ecosystem. and joining us this morning is florida congressman jared moskowitz who was former director of florida s division of emergency management. congressman, i thank you very much for being with us this morning. you led the state s response to hurricane michael, a cat 5 storm in 2018. what are the lessons you learned from that as we look at 2023? well, thanks, jose. look, one of the lessons we learned is that in addition to the wind, the water is extremely damaging, and when it comes to loss of life, that storm surge that came into gulf county and bay county in hurricane michael, you know, that was where we saw significant loss of life. so making sure folks that are in that zone a, making sure they evacuate is extremely important, making sure folks that are in manufactured homes, making sure they evacuate is extremely important, and you can already
Historically hit by storms this strength had to wonder about sandbags. had to wonder about boarding up windows and had to weigh like so many other floridians whether or not it was time to evacuate. thankfully it seems like we ve gotten through the worst of the wind gusts and it s going to be up to the emergency crews and emergency response coordinators to start assessing any damage that might exist. jose. thank you so very much. julio, as we come on the air right now, we re getting our news, confirmation of the first fatality. it is someone who lost their life inside a vehicle on i-75 somewhere near the tampa area. but that s the first confirmed fatality that we have. julio, you and i have been here. this is zone a, evacuation area. this and i just want to kind of give you all an indication. julio and i at maybe 5:30 this morning were right there, and that s the canal of king s bay, and this is happening, what, 15,
A news conference shortly. about 23,000 have been put on alert and are all over this place coming in yesterday we crisscrossed this area. we saw maybe 10, 12, sheriff s patrol cars, these electric vehicles, linesmen crisscrossing much of the state. a situation where everybody is on pins and needles to see what comes next and what they do around here, at least, is these feeder bands come in and then they just blow everything through. jose, what is your sense of the way the people are preparing for this as you get blown around there? obviously they ve been through a lot on the gulf coast. they ve seen hurricanes in the tampa area and north. how seriously is everyone taking this, the people you ve talked to there? reporter: people are taking it seriously. a lot of the folks i was speaking to here last night say
That s where governor desantis is. jose, thanks so much. back to you throughout the morning. so, bill, we got some live pictures of perry. you mentioned 127 miles an hour on some of these wind gusts. this does look in terms of a place where a bunch of people live, this does appear to be one of the areas likely to be hit hardest. i think the first thing you re noticing watching the coverage compared to other hurricanes we ve had in the last decade is that if you re not right in the heart of this hurricane, which is where perry unfortunately will go through in the next hour or two it s like a tropical storm. this is not a large powerful storm. this is a small powerful storm and unless you re in that real center, only about 30 miles wide, unless you re in this core which is now coming onshore you re not going to really experience the crazy winds, right now in perry the current wind gust, these are live readings at 48 miles per hour. where jose was located only in
Down because that northern eye wall is soon approaching our friends in the perry, florida, area. this has been downgraded to a category 3 storm but as i said, the threshold is 130 miles an hour. you re at 125. not much solace for anyone. this is still a very dangerous storm. stay with us. want to go to crystal river, florida, where we find jose diaz-balart. crystal river is 80 miles north of tampa. jose, have the conditions changed there since we talked to you last? reporter: they haven t. the feeder bands are coming through and sun emerging and fascinating to hear how bill was talking about the different surges that we re going to see and we are already experiencing. this is the seawall here in one of the canals that feeds into this lake area. and it s breached and this is up, you know, normally you have
Jose, of course, and everyone else who has been out in the storm, and that does it for this edition of andrea mitchell reports. follow the show on social media, @mitchellreports, and continuing coverage with chris jansing starts right now. good day, i m chris jansing, and this is msnbc s continuing live coverage of hurricane idalia. right now it s a category 1 hurricane that has carved a devastating and deadly path across northern florida. now, slamming georgia with winds as high as 85 miles per hour. we are now getting our first look at the damage left behind. these are live pictures from crystal river, the flooding already several miles inland, and it could get worse when high tide hits later today. while there have been two deaths reported, governor desantis just said he cannot confirm that they are directly tied to the storm. he did say overall big cities