Storm surge moves in quickly after Hurricane Milton's landfall

AccuWeather

As Hurricane Milton sent feet of storm surge into Punta Gorda, Florida, storm chaser Mike Scantlin was there, reporting live on AccuWeather.

Transcript

00:00a far different condition right now in the Punta Gorda.

00:04You're getting that southerly flow and a pretty strong storm surge.

00:07Mike, how bad is it?

00:08Well, you know, in the audio issues we've had in the last 15 minutes,

00:15the water is actually tough.

00:17We were out here on the street.

00:19We were parked here with the truck.

00:20And now there's about two and a half feet of standing water where we were parked.

00:23We were treated to the hotel parking lot.

00:25And now the field we were running across to get to the street

00:28is about a foot of water here now.

00:30So earlier you talked to me in the park and the water was just spilling over.

00:34And then when we left that live shot, the water had already come in

00:37through the left side of the tank here to the south, where it's lower.

00:41There's one of those 80-mile-an-hour gusts you were talking about.

00:44So big wind, very dry, but intermittent gusts.

00:46We've got power flashes, transformers exploding all around us here,

00:50very intermittent.

00:51But the water has come up probably three feet since you last talked to me,

00:56maybe four feet here.

00:57So most of downtown Punta Gorda is approaching underwater.

01:02The parking lot is nearly a feet of water standing there.

01:05So we're going to go straight to the hotel until this stuff retreats here.

01:09So we're hoping the water doesn't come all the way to the hotel,

01:11but it's getting very close.

01:13And we're on the high ground here.

01:15We might have some water here in the hotel just in a matter of an hour.

01:19And Mike, you were talking about the depth of the water.

01:21Can you explain to our viewers the power of the water?

01:24There seems like it's a pretty swift current.

01:26And by the way, I suspect that storm surge

01:29will be coming up here in the next couple of hours.

01:32Go ahead, Mike.

01:36Absolutely.

01:37You know, it's come in pretty steady.

01:38It's gotten a lot faster over the last 30 minutes.

01:41Absolutely has come up a lot quicker the last 30 minutes.

01:43But the water is moving very quickly.

01:45It's not just a slow rise, because it's coming in somewhere else,

01:49and it's getting funneled in through the backside of the neighborhood.

01:53Actually, it's in an offshore flow right here until we get that pivot point.

01:58So the water's coming in back here and then rushing

02:00in this direction with the wind.

02:02So the opposite of what we were seeing earlier on, we got a big gust coming.

02:06You hear that coming?

02:07So we might have some transformers popping here.

02:09But the onshore flow still isn't here yet.

02:13But it's pulling it in from the neighborhood

02:15and kind of back towards the harbor here as it comes out

02:17through the low-lying areas around downtown Punta Gorda.

02:20All right, Mike Scantlin, this is the storm surge

02:22in Punta Gorda that is going to get far worse.

02:24Mike, keep yourself safe.

02:26I want to show you why this is going to get far worse.

02:29We're going to go into the wind direction.

02:31There's that wind gust coming on in that Mike is preparing for here.

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