With time running out before Hurricane Milton's landfall, people along Florida's west coast rushed to fill up on gas wherever stations still had some
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00:00Our team coverage continues right now with meteorologist Tony Laubach. He joins us live
00:05from Tampa, Florida with more on how residents are preparing for Milton.
00:10Tony, please just break down exactly what's happening there on the ground right now.
00:18Well, folks are busy getting all their final last-minute preparations done. We've seen quite
00:23a few folks in the Tampa Clearwater areas today basically getting all of that. We tell them rush
00:28their preparations to completion and that is a lot of what many of these folks were doing today.
00:34Many of them taking advantage of the nicer weather. Right now we've got a little bit
00:38of light rain falling. We've had a couple of storms that have popped up in the area
00:41and then moved out over the Gulf, so we are dealing with an occasional pop of thunder
00:46every now and again. But generally speaking, the weather's been very cooperative for folks
00:50to get some of that down. We'll show you some of that video out of the Clearwater area. This is on
00:54the other side of Tampa. Folks were getting gas at some of the last gas stations that were
01:01available to get fuel. Many of the gas stations out of fuel and have shut down ahead of Milton.
01:07Many, though, having to get that last-minute fuel in the few places that still had it. Many of them
01:12with the various grades of gas only having certain grades in. Some of them the high grade,
01:16some of them the low grade. And a lot of those folks were dealing with the workers that were
01:21also on their last minute preps as many of those folks were out finishing their work days ahead of
01:26their own evacuations. Well, I'm working. I am getting ready to leave for the storm. Headed to
01:32Orlando. I am in an evacuation zone, so you know, just got to be prepared. Never know what's going
01:36to happen. But everybody's been saying that there hasn't been a storm like this in over 100 years,
01:40which is kind of crazy. Thankfully, I got a buddy out in Deltona. You know,
01:43going to go hang there for a couple days and enjoy time over there.
01:46And, of course, we've been talking about this storm going to transverse the state of Florida,
01:53so this is going to be a much far-reaching disaster for a lot of folks, not just here in
01:58Tampa, Point South, and even up toward Orlando as this thing is going to rocket across the state
02:02and work its way back over the Atlantic. Myself and my producer, Rocky, will be here in the Tampa
02:08area. This is where we're going to hunker down for landfall tomorrow. Right now, we are expecting
02:13that to happen later in the evening, so we expect tomorrow to be a much different picture,
02:17Bree, as we are out and about tomorrow, not expecting to see near the amount of people
02:21that we saw out today. Hopefully, all of them finishing their evacuation plans and getting to
02:26the places of safety because tomorrow the weather is going to turn downhill in a hurry well before
02:31that storm makes landfall. Well, Tony, thank you so much for that update. And good to know,
02:38thank you so much for showing the gas situation there.