AccuWeather's Tony Laubach reported live from Apalachicola, Florida, on Sept. 25, where the area had largely emptied out as people prepared for potential destruction from Helene.
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00:00But right now we're going to be joined live by AccuWeather meteorologist Tony Laubach.
00:04He was enjoying the beach yesterday.
00:05Tony, I know that we're beginning to see some changes here at Appalachia Cold of Florida.
00:11Are you noticing any kind of a water rise yet?
00:14How are the showers treating you?
00:15How's the wind and all that, Tony?
00:18Well, everything's treating me pretty good.
00:22Usually it does.
00:23Mother Nature and I have a pretty good relationship here, except for she's giving me a cold.
00:28But behind me here, this is the water, and you notice it's not really all that choppy.
00:31We're seeing a little bit of wave action here with some of the bigger gusts of wind that
00:35are coming through, but we're really not dealing with a whole lot.
00:38Again, if you've been under a rock, you're not really going to know a hurricane's coming
00:43right now, but believe me, everybody's aware because this area is like a ghost town right
00:48now.
00:49Most of these folks that were here yesterday doing final prep work, they're gone.
00:53We've just run into a handful of people here at Appalachia Cold across the water over St.
00:58George Island.
00:59Very, very few people, if any, left behind, as most of them took their belongings by this
01:04morning and they were on their way out.
01:05Mandatory evacuations took effect this morning, a lot of folks taking heed of that.
01:10Further inland, though, we'll go to Crawfordville, where we were dealing with folks really just
01:15getting themselves prepared, a lot of sandbagging going on.
01:18That has been the common theme with a lot of these residents this morning.
01:21Got up early, headed to a lot of these sandbag stations.
01:24We saw them in Tallahassee, Crawfordville, Appalachia, Cola, really just all over the
01:28place.
01:29People going, getting sandbags filled, taking them back to their residence, their properties,
01:33setting them out, and then heading on their way.
01:36We talked to many residents who were dealing with all of the logistics this morning and
01:40working on their way back to their homes and then heading on out to get out of the way
01:44of Helene.
01:45We've stayed in Tallahassee for a couple storms, but it's just more inlet than this, and there's
01:52a lot more bodies of water around here to flood, but this one seems like it's going
01:58to come right at it.
02:02West, probably Diffiniac.
02:11And we've been talking with a lot of these residents, and they have really been kind
02:14of comparing this anticipation to Hurricane Michael, some of them even referring back
02:19to Ian, which hit a couple years ago.
02:20So a lot of folks here really, really taking this one much more seriously than some of
02:26the ones that I have been on in the past before, Jeff, and that is a very, very good thing
02:29because as you've been talking about, we continue to see that forecast ramp up that number,
02:34and with that is going to be the aftermath, unfortunately, that's likely to be left behind
02:39in areas just like this.
02:40All right.
02:41Thank you for that report there, Tony, and before we jump a little farther south into
02:45the core of the storm.