Florida's capital city of Tallahassee is preparing for Helene, which is expected to make landfall tomorrow as a major Category 3 hurricane. People are stocking up on groceries and preparing sandbags.
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00:00Mike, this is an area set to feel huge impacts when it comes to especially the damaging wind and the heavy rainfall.
00:09Absolutely. And you know, this morning, we already have flash flood warnings in the area about a county and a half southwest of me with some of those storms coming in off the Gulf this morning, very slow moving here out ahead of the faster flow associated with the storm.
00:23But this is Mike Blankenship skate park.
00:25This is one of eight sandbag stations here across Leon County. And you can see 1213 cars behind me. And then we have a new a new dump of sand on this side of the parking lot that just got here right before we went live.
00:38There's already eight or so cars over here on this side. So people taking it seriously here. I've been to a couple grocery stores this morning as well. There are no there's no bread to the water is almost out and all the non perishables already sold out here in two different of the larger department stores here in Tallahassee.
00:54So people are taking it seriously. People are getting prepared here. And you know, you got plenty of time to prepare. If you haven't already, you've got plenty of time if you're here in the Tallahassee metro area, and you're going to want to take this seriously.
01:05Because even if the storm does miss off to the west, if you don't get the stronger winds are still going to be major power outages and and damage in the area. And then a lot of heavy rain as well. And a lot of low lying areas here in the city of Tallahassee.
01:18All right, Mike, have you spoken to anyone any residents of Tallahassee? Can you provide us maybe an idea of how people are feeling about Helene?
01:29Well, you know, they're a little surprised to be dead center of the track usually, and you know, a little bit of a recency bias here. But you know, in 2018, Michael very strong category five missed just enough to the west to not really have any major impacts.
01:41And then the last 13 months, we've had two storms go just east of here. So they're a little anxious to be in the middle of that track. And you know, they've had enough close misses here in nearby in the nearby areas to have it fresh on their mind and know that they do need to take it seriously.