00:00Now for a closer look at the impacts in Florida right now, ACCUELA's Leslie Hudson joins us live from Silver Spring.
00:06So Leslie, what are the conditions like there? It sounds like it's raining pretty hard.
00:10Uh-huh.
00:13Yeah, it absolutely is, Damien. I actually had to get undercover because it's actively lightning here in Silver Spring.
00:19So we're just outside Ocala, which is in Marion County, and this is where the bulk of the heavy rains have been focused this afternoon.
00:26Now a big chunk of Central and North Florida have been under a flood watch since early this morning.
00:32We've seen a couple of flood warnings in Central Florida when we saw the initial rain bands come in.
00:38They started to move across Brevard and Volusia counties, which is on the east side of the state, around 7 a.m., 8 a.m., and then everything has been pushing inland.
00:47So this is, of course, as forecast to move off the coast on the west side of the state here in the next couple of hours.
00:54And what it does after that, of course, is up for large debate.
00:58But the storms here have been pretty steady.
01:01I came in from the Orlando area, which is just about an hour and a half south of here, and the rain has been pretty solid.
01:09So I'm surprised we haven't seen more localized flooding here.
01:13They are anticipating the rain in this immediate area of Ocala and back towards the west in the Donnellan area to be pretty heavy because there's another big cluster of embedded rainstorms that are coming in off the Atlantic and headed west.
01:27So we're anticipating a few more hours of the heavy rains here before everything starts to taper off.
01:33So far, you know, this is not too unusual for Florida.
01:35Folks are doing their best.
01:36I did come out of the interstate, the turnpike, rather, and it was pretty congested.
01:41So folks are trying to do their best to navigate the heavy storms over these next couple of hours.
01:47Reporting live from Silver Springs, Florida, I'm Leslie Hudson.
01:50Back to you.
01:52Thanks for the update, Leslie.
01:53And the important reminder that you mentioned at the beginning, when there is lightning, you do need to get undercover.
