Storm chaser Tony Laubach reported live from the midst of intense wind gusts and torrential rain as Hurricane Milton made its way across Florida on the night of Oct. 9
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00:00We're going to get over to Tony Laubach, meteorologist Tony Laubach in Ruskin, Florida, on the south side of Pillsboro County, south of Tampa.
00:06A fierce storm here as well near I-75, just south of Tampa Bay. Tony?
00:13Yeah, we're just south of Tampa, near the Ruskin area. We're at a rest stop here on I-75 and we've been dealing with some of those winds.
00:19You've been talking about some of the stronger gusts that we've been seeing, probably in the 60-70 mile an hour range.
00:24Believe it or not, right now is actually some of the calmer winds that we've seen here.
00:28About five minutes ago, we were seeing those gusts approaching 80 miles per hour,
00:32probably to the point where I could do the moonwalker into the wind there, leaning into it and actually holding up in the wind.
00:38Right now, we're seeing probably about 70 or so miles per hour.
00:41Actually, there's a gentleman over here in a green hat. I don't know who he is, but he's standing here at the rest stop with me.
00:46We're both in the wind here now. We're getting a pretty good gust, probably about 60 or so.
00:51Things were calm down to the south a little bit ago, but we're seeing a much different story here.
00:55Why don't you come on in here, sir? What's your name?
00:57I'm Jerry.
00:58Jerry, what are you doing over here?
01:00I'm chasing.
01:01You're chasing? We've got another chaser here. We're all a bunch of crazies here. How long have you been out here right now?
01:05I left Sarasota, say about 3 o'clock, after they figured the eye was going to turn up here.
01:11Came up here, drove through it. Been here about four hours or so.
01:15What's it been like for you up here?
01:17Just like this.
01:18Just like this. Exactly. And that's what we're talking about here.
01:21The people out that should be out right now should only be the experienced folks.
01:25We've seen a lot of emergency crews, storm chasers, media. Those are the only ones you want to be out right now.
01:30I-75, for the most part, Jeff, is pretty passable.
01:34There are areas where there's some tree debris down in the road, but nothing like we've seen in past hurricanes,
01:38like in Louisiana where we see entire trees in the road.
01:41So most everything has been pretty passable for the most part.
01:44We've moved a little further inland because of some of the flooding.
01:46You heard Bill talking about it a little bit ago.
01:49That has been some of the issue, the closer you get down to shore.
01:51So we wanted to get out of the flooding area.
01:53We're working our way back up to Tampa right now.
01:56That is going to be the goal here, is we're going to make a very slow trip of it.
02:00As you can see, these winds, again, gusting 60, 70 miles per hour at times.
02:04So we're definitely in that northern-western quadrant of that eyewall
02:08where we're seeing these really, really potent winds.
02:10The power is still on behind me, but a couple of trees in the background there are uprooted.
02:15Some of them pushed over.
02:16But again, power has been sporadically off.
02:19That's been the thing I've been the most amazed with, honestly, Jeff,
02:22is that we haven't seen complete darkness everywhere.
02:25Power is still on in many places, although a lot of folks are without power and many more to come.
02:31All right, Bill.
02:32All right, Tony Laubach, meteorologist Tony Laubach in Ruskin, Florida, with the tenacious backside of this storm.
02:38That's the business side of this storm.
02:40If you are south of the center of the storm here, we are dealing with some very strong winds,
02:44and the storm surge is rushing in.
02:47Just talking to Bernie, we have 70-plus mile-per-hour winds in Lakeland.