AccuWeather's Ali Reid reported live from the scene of storm surge flooding in Fort Myers, showcasing the powerful impacts of Milton even before the storm had made landfall.
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00:00at Accuweather's. Allie Reed is there live tonight. Allie, that city is very much vulnerable to storm surge.
00:10Right, Damian, Bernie, we were talking about in the last hour with you guys that the storm surge,
00:14the flooding, had just gotten so bad in Fort Myers Beach it became unsafe for our crew to be there.
00:20We needed to redetermine where we were going to be for the next couple of hours and we figured
00:25Fort Myers proper downtown here was going to be the safest location. Take a look around us
00:29here though. We're already starting to see that flash flooding come up really in this area too
00:34coming from that storm surge and this is going to be the scenario all across the downtown area.
00:40Okay, we are about one block from the bay here and that water is coming up very very fast. We know
00:47landfall still a few hours away here but this is what we're going to be seeing all around town.
00:51Let's take this some video for you if we can. This is the bridge leading into Sanibel Island.
00:56A number of the police officers said guys you got to go see this for yourself. This is
01:00incredible stuff. Again, just impressive to see that storm surge coming up and over. That's Fort
01:07Myers leading into Sanibel and in that area in and of itself that's going to be an area people
01:12are going to want to watch. I'm assuming within the next 30 minutes to an hour that area there
01:17is going to be completely closed off. Now let's take this some next video for you guys. This is
01:22from earlier this afternoon. We were talking about all day here on AccuWeather that there was going
01:27to be a number of tornadoes all across the state of Florida and this is what we saw right here in
01:34Fort Myers. We didn't have to travel very far guys to see the damage there. We spoke to so many
01:39people that said it came in very very fast. It tore the roofs off their homes and now they had
01:45to quickly redetermine where they were going to stay. That was in an area by the way that was not
01:50under a mandatory evacuation so a lot of those families had stayed back and didn't decide to
01:55leave. Now their homes destroyed even before Milton makes landfall. A lot of them calling
02:00police saying we need help. Where can we go? What shelters can we get to? Because their families are
02:06now at great risk. So really really this is even before landfall all day long over the last couple
02:12of hours. It has been non-stop here guys really seeing the damage that this hurricane has brought
02:19its way. Now let's bring you back live again. The video here just really incredible to see again
02:24that storm surge the flash flooding that we're seeing in this area is amazing. What we want to
02:30do for you in the next hour for you is we want to try and get a little bit closer over to the bay
02:34so that way you could get an idea of what that water is looking like but it is certainly fast
02:39moving and those wind gusts at times are truly incredible here and again that's something we're
02:45going to be paying mind to as we look ahead for landfall. Guys we're going to check in with you in
02:50about an hour but I think we have found a relatively safe spot for us to be over the next
02:54couple of hours and we'll check in with you in a little bit. Allie be careful that storm surge
02:59is going to get a lot worse here.