As Hurricane Milton sent feet of storm surge into Punta Gorda, Florida, storm chaser Mike Scantlin was there, reporting live on AccuWeather.
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00:00a far different condition right now in the Punta Gorda.
00:04You're getting that southerly flow and a pretty strong storm surge.
00:07Mike, how bad is it?
00:08Well, you know, in the audio issues we've had in the last 15 minutes,
00:15the water is actually tough.
00:17We were out here on the street.
00:19We were parked here with the truck.
00:20And now there's about two and a half feet of standing water where we were parked.
00:23We were treated to the hotel parking lot.
00:25And now the field we were running across to get to the street
00:28is about a foot of water here now.
00:30So earlier you talked to me in the park and the water was just spilling over.
00:34And then when we left that live shot, the water had already come in
00:37through the left side of the tank here to the south, where it's lower.
00:41There's one of those 80-mile-an-hour gusts you were talking about.
00:44So big wind, very dry, but intermittent gusts.
00:46We've got power flashes, transformers exploding all around us here,
00:50very intermittent.
00:51But the water has come up probably three feet since you last talked to me,
00:56maybe four feet here.
00:57So most of downtown Punta Gorda is approaching underwater.
01:02The parking lot is nearly a feet of water standing there.
01:05So we're going to go straight to the hotel until this stuff retreats here.
01:09So we're hoping the water doesn't come all the way to the hotel,
01:11but it's getting very close.
01:13And we're on the high ground here.
01:15We might have some water here in the hotel just in a matter of an hour.
01:19And Mike, you were talking about the depth of the water.
01:21Can you explain to our viewers the power of the water?
01:24There seems like it's a pretty swift current.
01:26And by the way, I suspect that storm surge
01:29will be coming up here in the next couple of hours.
01:32Go ahead, Mike.
01:36Absolutely.
01:37You know, it's come in pretty steady.
01:38It's gotten a lot faster over the last 30 minutes.
01:41Absolutely has come up a lot quicker the last 30 minutes.
01:43But the water is moving very quickly.
01:45It's not just a slow rise, because it's coming in somewhere else,
01:49and it's getting funneled in through the backside of the neighborhood.
01:53Actually, it's in an offshore flow right here until we get that pivot point.
01:58So the water's coming in back here and then rushing
02:00in this direction with the wind.
02:02So the opposite of what we were seeing earlier on, we got a big gust coming.
02:06You hear that coming?
02:07So we might have some transformers popping here.
02:09But the onshore flow still isn't here yet.
02:13But it's pulling it in from the neighborhood
02:15and kind of back towards the harbor here as it comes out
02:17through the low-lying areas around downtown Punta Gorda.
02:20All right, Mike Scantlin, this is the storm surge
02:22in Punta Gorda that is going to get far worse.
02:24Mike, keep yourself safe.
02:26I want to show you why this is going to get far worse.
02:29We're going to go into the wind direction.
02:31There's that wind gust coming on in that Mike is preparing for here.