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CNN Live At Daybreak

Tropical Storm Barry Weakening but Still Powerful

Aired August 06, 2001 - 07:31   ET

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

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
COLLEEN MCEDWARDS, CNN ANCHOR: We want to bring you up to date on the top story of the day. Tropical Storm Barry is getting weaker, but it still can throw a devastating punch. It's proving that this morning. Barry is lashing northwestern Florida with heavy rain. Winds have died down a little bit. The storm is moving slowly. Forecasters fear it will sit and dump rain causing flooding across the Gulf Coast. Flood warnings have been issued in three northern Florida counties. Barry hit land around 1:30 Eastern this morning in the Florida Panhandle east of Destin. The National Weather Service says up to 10 inches of rain could be expected in northern Florida, southern Alabama and Georgia.

We're joined now by Mark Potter who is in Panama City Beach, Florida, right there on the Panhandle.

Mark, how's it looking right now?

MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, actually the weather here is diminishing. It's - the winds have come down considerably. In fact, a short while ago, we thought we saw some sunlight peaking through some of the cloud bands. We've had a little bit of rain this morning periodically. The waves are still kicked up but it's not nearly as dramatic as it was overnight.

Now officials in this area are out right now doing the damage assessment but preliminarily, they say things are looking pretty good. There have been some downed power lines, a little bit of flooding along the roads but nothing really serious they say. They're still under a flood watch here but the most important thing that they can say is that so far there have been no reports of injuries or fatalities.

The storm came in around 11:00 p.m. to midnight Central time and that was fortuitous timing because that coincided with a low tide - a dead low tide in a full moon phase which is lower than normal so that really reduced the threat of coastal flooding. So officials say, at least for this area, Panama City, Panama City Beach, Bay County, this is the kind of storm you want, the kind that comes through quickly and doesn't do very much damage.

MCEDWARDS: Mark, we had Governor Jeb Bush on the program just a few minutes ago saying that 34,000 homes without power in Florida. Is it - is it pretty much knocked out where you are or is it sporadic? POTTER: It's sporadic. In fact, I would say most of the areas that we drove around had - seemed to have full power. The authorities say in this particular county they had some power lines knocked down by falling trees, things like that, but they used that word sporadic and they - it is clearly not widespread. We can see that ourselves.

MCEDWARDS: OK, great. Mark Potter, Panama City Beach, thanks very much.

VINCE CELLINI, CNN ANCHOR: Right now we want to go to the phone and Susan Carpenter is there from the Covington County Alabama Emergency Management people. It's on the Alabama-Florida line.

And, Susan, are you with us?

Yes, Susan, are you with us this morning?

SUSAN CARPENTER, COVINGTON COUNTY ALABAMA EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT: Yes, I am.

CELLINI: Yes, good morning. We understand that your area is getting some pretty serious rain right now, is that going on?

CARPENTER: We sure are and at the present time, it's the rain and still we having some gusts of wind at this time, too.

CELLINI: How about some flooding problems? Any - to this point, are you expecting some?

CARPENTER: Well, the flooding has not been the major problem, the wind has with us because we have approximately 30 spots right now our county road crews are going to with trees down across the roads.

CELLINI: So several of the main roads in that area...

CARPENTER: Right.

CELLINI: ... have been closed down?

CARPENTER: Yes.

CELLINI: And what are you doing to try to alleviate that now?

CARPENTER: Well, approximately 5:00 our chairman, Greg White, officially closed all county roads so we're trying to keep the public off the roads at this time so our country crews and sheriff's department can scan these roads to make sure they are safe for the public.

CELLINI: Well, Susan, best of luck to you. Keep up the good work.

CARPENTER: Thank you.

CELLINI: Susan Carpenter from the Covington County Alabama Emergency Management people. MCEDWARDS: All right, to Jill Brown now and the forecast.

Jill, I know that the speed of the storm is important. How quickly it moves will say a lot about how much rain falls. Can you clarify for us, I mean is it - is it moving more quickly then - or quicker that makes officials feel happy about it or is it moving more slowly than they would like?

JILL BROWN, CNN METEOROLOGIST: I think at this point the fact that it's moving at all...

MCEDWARDS: Right.

BROWN: ... is good and it was expected to stall so this is obviously much better scenario.

Here's the latest stats on Barry and you can see it still has winds at 65 miles per hour. About to get another update from the Hurricane Center in 25 minutes and we'll probably see that number go down considerably. It's still classified as a tropical storm, but we'll watch the transition to maybe a tropical depression and then just an area of low pressure.

As we heard from that last caller that the main problem right now is the wind and down trees, not flooding yet, but give it a while. We'll continue to see the winds come down but the water is continuing to rise as we get more and more rain through here. So that's one thing that we think we'll continue to see as it moves on that track up through central Alabama and into Mississippi. So we're looking at so far not that much heavy rain in Alabama. Give it a few more hours. It's really heavy right now in Montgomery and will continue to spread on northbound and should begin to die down in the Florida Panhandle where the darker red shows us we've had up to six inches of rain, probably more than that in some locations.

So over the next few days, we may see this, yes, next few days. We're talking about maybe three to four day's worth of rain with this. As it moves slowly to the northwest, the faster it moves the less flooding we'll have. Looks like it will continue on a relatively slow path in this direction.

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