Storm surge rises along the west Florida coast after Milton's landfall

AccuWeather

From Fort Myers to Sarasota, floodwaters rose quickly in the hours after Hurricane Milton's landfall on Oct. 9.

Transcript

00:00Our team coverage continues right now with Accuweather's Allie Reed.

00:04She joins us live from Fort Myers, Florida.

00:06Allie, this storm very unique in that the backside of this is where we're seeing a lot of fierce winds in some spots.

00:13What's your experience there in Fort Myers?

00:19Right, Jeff.

00:20Well, when you're dealing with a downtown situation and mixed with a hurricane,

00:23you're also going to get some wind tunnel.

00:26We've seen that in a lot of streets here in the downtown Fort Myers area.

00:30The other thing to note, though, this is First Street here.

00:33The entire street now flooded out.

00:35We've been watching that storm surge, that major problem that we were going to be talking about in this area.

00:41We are about now two, maybe three blocks from the water here, and this is the downtown area.

00:49Lots of shops along here.

00:55Over there is a local bar.

00:59You can already tell that the entire floor has been inundated with water, unfortunately.

01:04So we've been talking about the surge and what that could lead for Fort Myers area,

01:09and that is something that we are seeing.

01:12You know, a lot of people are saying, well, you know, it doesn't really feel like a hurricane, right?

01:15We don't have a lot of rain, but we do have a lot of water in this area.

01:21That, and then comes the storm surge here, the flooding that we were talking about.

01:25Let's also not forget that earlier this morning.

01:31All right.

01:32You know, we're having a little bit of a difficult time with Ally's signal right now.

01:35Ally, we got most of your report there.

01:36We do appreciate it.

01:37But at this point, due to some of the weather conditions and other impacts to the service,

01:41we are unable to hear you at this moment.

01:44So our team coverage will continue right now with meteorologist Connor McCrory.

01:49And Connor is joining us now live in Sarasota.

01:52Connor, we recently checked in in downtown Sarasota with Bill Waddell.

01:57And in the neighborhood where he is, we saw a rapid escalation to the storm surge.

02:01You appear to be on slightly higher ground.

02:04How's it going?

02:05How have you seen things change over the past hour there?

02:10Yeah, we actually, we ran into Bill down there just by chance.

02:14First time I'd ever met him.

02:16Nice guy.

02:17But, yeah, that surge came up real quick and we had to get out of there.

02:20The last time we spoke, it was dead calm.

02:23We were in the middle of the eye.

02:24And, man, the backside came through so strong.

02:28You can hopefully see the winds behind me are just going crazy.

02:32I would estimate we're probably seeing some gusts of at least 110 miles per hour here in downtown Sarasota.

02:39For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov

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