From Fort Myers to Sarasota, floodwaters rose quickly in the hours after Hurricane Milton's landfall on Oct. 9.
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00:00Our team coverage continues right now with Accuweather's Allie Reed.
00:04She joins us live from Fort Myers, Florida.
00:06Allie, this storm very unique in that the backside of this is where we're seeing a lot of fierce winds in some spots.
00:13What's your experience there in Fort Myers?
00:19Right, Jeff.
00:20Well, when you're dealing with a downtown situation and mixed with a hurricane,
00:23you're also going to get some wind tunnel.
00:26We've seen that in a lot of streets here in the downtown Fort Myers area.
00:30The other thing to note, though, this is First Street here.
00:33The entire street now flooded out.
00:35We've been watching that storm surge, that major problem that we were going to be talking about in this area.
00:41We are about now two, maybe three blocks from the water here, and this is the downtown area.
00:49Lots of shops along here.
00:55Over there is a local bar.
00:59You can already tell that the entire floor has been inundated with water, unfortunately.
01:04So we've been talking about the surge and what that could lead for Fort Myers area,
01:09and that is something that we are seeing.
01:12You know, a lot of people are saying, well, you know, it doesn't really feel like a hurricane, right?
01:15We don't have a lot of rain, but we do have a lot of water in this area.
01:21That, and then comes the storm surge here, the flooding that we were talking about.
01:25Let's also not forget that earlier this morning.
01:31All right.
01:32You know, we're having a little bit of a difficult time with Ally's signal right now.
01:35Ally, we got most of your report there.
01:36We do appreciate it.
01:37But at this point, due to some of the weather conditions and other impacts to the service,
01:41we are unable to hear you at this moment.
01:44So our team coverage will continue right now with meteorologist Connor McCrory.
01:49And Connor is joining us now live in Sarasota.
01:52Connor, we recently checked in in downtown Sarasota with Bill Waddell.
01:57And in the neighborhood where he is, we saw a rapid escalation to the storm surge.
02:01You appear to be on slightly higher ground.
02:04How's it going?
02:05How have you seen things change over the past hour there?
02:10Yeah, we actually, we ran into Bill down there just by chance.
02:14First time I'd ever met him.
02:16Nice guy.
02:17But, yeah, that surge came up real quick and we had to get out of there.
02:20The last time we spoke, it was dead calm.
02:23We were in the middle of the eye.
02:24And, man, the backside came through so strong.
02:28You can hopefully see the winds behind me are just going crazy.
02:32I would estimate we're probably seeing some gusts of at least 110 miles per hour here in downtown Sarasota.
02:39For more information, visit www.FEMA.gov