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CNN Saturday Morning News

Report From Tropical Storm Hanna

Aired September 14, 2002 - 09:16   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: And good morning, everyone, welcome back. I'm meteorologist Jacqui Jeras in the CNN Weather Center, keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Hanna, which is about 35 miles to the southwest of Pascagoula, Mississippi. You can see a tornado watch in effect for southern parts of Alabama and the panhandle of Florida. Heavy rainfall expected today, about 4 to 8 inches in the path to the east of the center of Hanna. It looks like the center should be getting close to Mobile, Alabama, a little bit later on this morning.
And for details, live from Mobile, we're going to go now to Darwin Singleton, and he is from WPMI-TV in Mobile.

Darwin, how are the conditions?

DARWIN SINGLETON, WPMI METEOROLOGIST: Jacqui, you mean it's not already here? We're still waiting on some of it.

Well, I'll tell you, it is really nasty right now. In the last, oh, I'd say half an hour, the wind has really picked up. In fact, I was looking at radar a little while ago, and Mobile Bay is a pretty long bay, but it's starting to work its way, some of the rougher weather, up the bay.

We are near the top of the bay, I guess you'd have to say if you were looking at a map. And of course we have roads that travel across the bay. One's an elevated interstate, the other is a causeway that's right along the water. In fact, now the causeway is blocked in the westbound lane because of the water.

Take a look at where I'm standing now. You can't really see where the bay begins and this parking lot ends. I am at a Texaco station, which actually had to close today because no business coming in here today.

When we got here this morning, just before daylight, none of this was here. In fact, this was high and dry. Now, as you can see, water is up around the base of the pumps. And this is basically water being forced into the bay, and of course the river -- water -- river water coming from the Mobile Delta, all colliding here.

And since the storm's out in the Gulf, it won't go away. So now it's building up and building up. And basically we're just going to have to deal with it. Luckily we have Interstate 10 that crosses a little bit higher than the causeway, so we still have easy access to and from different parts of the Gulf Coast. But for us, we're used to storms like this. For instance, when Hurricane Georges was here four years ago, the water was over these pumps. It was lapping at the roof of this overhang.

So this is a -- this is kind of a small inconvenience for us, but it does get us wet, and we needed the rain, so I guess we can look at the bright side when it comes to getting some of this shower.

JERAS: Absolutely. How deep is that water that you're standing in there, Darwin?

SINGLETON: Oh, it's up -- as I told one person a little earlier, it's up to the top of my athletic socks. That gives you some idea of where the water is.

JERAS: All right. Now we know you're wearing athletic socks. All right, thanks, Darwin, very much for that report.

SINGLETON: That's a -- (UNINTELLIGIBLE). Sure thing.

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