Hurricane Milton leads to damaging tornadoes and storm surge hours before landfall

AccuWeather

AccuWeather's Ali Reid reported live from the scene of storm surge flooding in Fort Myers, showcasing the powerful impacts of Milton even before the storm had made landfall.

Transcript

00:00at Accuweather's. Allie Reed is there live tonight. Allie, that city is very much vulnerable to storm surge.

00:10Right, Damian, Bernie, we were talking about in the last hour with you guys that the storm surge,

00:14the flooding, had just gotten so bad in Fort Myers Beach it became unsafe for our crew to be there.

00:20We needed to redetermine where we were going to be for the next couple of hours and we figured

00:25Fort Myers proper downtown here was going to be the safest location. Take a look around us

00:29here though. We're already starting to see that flash flooding come up really in this area too

00:34coming from that storm surge and this is going to be the scenario all across the downtown area.

00:40Okay, we are about one block from the bay here and that water is coming up very very fast. We know

00:47landfall still a few hours away here but this is what we're going to be seeing all around town.

00:51Let's take this some video for you if we can. This is the bridge leading into Sanibel Island.

00:56A number of the police officers said guys you got to go see this for yourself. This is

01:00incredible stuff. Again, just impressive to see that storm surge coming up and over. That's Fort

01:07Myers leading into Sanibel and in that area in and of itself that's going to be an area people

01:12are going to want to watch. I'm assuming within the next 30 minutes to an hour that area there

01:17is going to be completely closed off. Now let's take this some next video for you guys. This is

01:22from earlier this afternoon. We were talking about all day here on AccuWeather that there was going

01:27to be a number of tornadoes all across the state of Florida and this is what we saw right here in

01:34Fort Myers. We didn't have to travel very far guys to see the damage there. We spoke to so many

01:39people that said it came in very very fast. It tore the roofs off their homes and now they had

01:45to quickly redetermine where they were going to stay. That was in an area by the way that was not

01:50under a mandatory evacuation so a lot of those families had stayed back and didn't decide to

01:55leave. Now their homes destroyed even before Milton makes landfall. A lot of them calling

02:00police saying we need help. Where can we go? What shelters can we get to? Because their families are

02:06now at great risk. So really really this is even before landfall all day long over the last couple

02:12of hours. It has been non-stop here guys really seeing the damage that this hurricane has brought

02:19its way. Now let's bring you back live again. The video here just really incredible to see again

02:24that storm surge the flash flooding that we're seeing in this area is amazing. What we want to

02:30do for you in the next hour for you is we want to try and get a little bit closer over to the bay

02:34so that way you could get an idea of what that water is looking like but it is certainly fast

02:39moving and those wind gusts at times are truly incredible here and again that's something we're

02:45going to be paying mind to as we look ahead for landfall. Guys we're going to check in with you in

02:50about an hour but I think we have found a relatively safe spot for us to be over the next

02:54couple of hours and we'll check in with you in a little bit. Allie be careful that storm surge

02:59is going to get a lot worse here.

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