Flooding from Hurricane Milton overtook Punta Gorda, Florida, on the night of Oct. 9, as storm chaser Aaron Jayjack showed AccuWeather viewers live.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Now we're going to head a little bit down the road to storm chaser Aaron Jayjack in Punta Gorda.
00:05Aaron, also obvious storm surge there. Looks like we've got vehicles in the water and the rain and wind continue for some.
00:12And how is this going in your area? How have you seen the storm surge behave now compared to say several hours ago?
00:21Yeah Jeff, we have been here in Punta Gorda for the duration of the event.
00:25Essentially watching the storm surge slowly come in at first.
00:29We started off just down the road from our hotel where a seawall was at.
00:34And we watched the water, when swells would come, would spill over a little bit.
00:38Eventually it rose and it started spilling in, continuously spilling in even without those swells.
00:44And eventually we got to the point where we thought we better check to make sure our route back to our hotel,
00:49which is our safe spot, we could still get there. So we went and checked it out.
00:53We can get to the hotel. So we went back to the seawall for about 20 minutes.
00:57Decided we needed to get retreat back to the hotel. When we came back we had to drive through about two feet of water.
01:02It came up that fast. And now earlier that was, you know, several hours ago.
01:08And we watched that water rise to the point that now we are on an island down here in my hotel,
01:13surrounded by cars that are in the water. We have moved our car to the one high spot right up next to the hotel.
01:20But we are watching the water continue to rise. The surge water is continuing to rise.
01:25But we feel like it has slowed down in how fast it's rising.
01:29We've been watching along the cars here to see if it's still continuing to rise.
01:34And it's coming up a little bit. We're still getting pounded by these westerly winds.
01:38So when still these strong westerly winds give up and move away from this area, that water is going to stay here.
01:44We're likely going to be stuck here, I imagine, for the next 24 hours or so, waiting for these waters to go.
01:50We've lost power. We've been seeing power flashes all night.
01:55Reporting, be safe out there. A lot of vehicles in the water.
01:58I'm glad that yours is in a higher spot right now.
02:01But there will be many insurance plans coming in out of this storm for sure.
02:04Aaron Jajak, live in Punta Gorda, as the area around Charlotte Harbor fills up with seawater here.
02:10That strong onshore wind continuing to keep the water levels high.
02:14Stay with us. We're going to have an update on power outages and impacts for the night.