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American Morning
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Aired August 06, 2001 - 09:00 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.
DARYN KAGAN, CNN ANCHOR: We're going to start with the storm that is soaking parts of the south today. Tropical storm Barry is headed towards southern Alabama. Barry roared ashore along the western Florida Panhandle overnight. The Weather Service says the storm had winds of 70 miles per hour when it made landfall.
Barry kicked up strong waves along the Gulf Coast with a tidal surge of four to five feet. Florida Governor Jeb Bush tells CNN about 34,000 homes lost power as a result of the storm.
We have our Chad Myers with us here to give us the latest -- Chad.
LEON HARRIS, CNN ANCHOR: Chad, you've been watching it for the last few days. What's up now?
CHAD MYERS, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, you know, it's still a tropical storm. They haven't downgraded it yet. But they're about to. It's 40 miles per hour right now on land and it needs to be over water to gain strength. Hurricanes, tropical storms, cyclones, they're all basically the same thing, they love the warm water. They feed off that warm water and when a storm's center moves away from the water, moves over land or even over some mountains at some times, it really tears the storm up. You lose the intensity. You lose the fuel to the fire.
There's the storm last night as it came on shore very close to Destin, Florida, and now the center of the storm has moved well on up into parts of Alabama.
Don't focus on the center of this storm. This is a wide scope storm. It's very strong. The storm is now in Tallahassee, very close the Panama City. In fact, one of the live shots we were doing just about 10 minutes ago, very wobbly, the storm coming through, one of those big cells running right over Panama City right now. Also, another spot that's seeing an awful lot of rain, Montgomery here.
This is the north side of what we would call still the low of this storm and there is some very heavy rainfall in Montgomery right now all the way down into the Florida Panhandle. By later on this afternoon in the heat of the day we will have storms in Arkansas. We'll have storms in Tennessee. We'll have storms in North Carolina and Virginia and down to Florida with this system as it spins around down here across the southeast. So, yes, there could be severe weather. There could be tornadoes and there also could be some flash flooding with this system as it continues to spin around. The good news, at least for right now, it is still moving. Some storms just stall over areas and that creates a lot of the flooding.
In fact, Max Mayfield from the National Hurricane Center joins us. And Max, I guess it's been a very long night. CNN's going to owe you a gift certificate to Starbucks, I'm afraid, before this is all done. What do you know now that we didn't know a couple of hours ago?
MAX MAYFIELD, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: Well, as you said, Chad, the good news is that it is continuing to weaken. All the coastal watches and warnings are discontinued now. It's barely a tropical storm and we will likely downgrade that -- in fact, I'm sure we'll downgrade that to a tropical depression here within a couple of hours.
MYERS: Now, it really is going to be a flood and possibly a strong tornado, small tornadoes spinning around this storm system now. It's not the storm surge. That's all done, right?
MAYFIELD: Right. And all the winds you see will be subsiding on the coastline there. We always have a threat of isolated tornadoes with a system like this coming up out of the Gulf of Mexico into the southeast. The rainfall threat is not going to be immediate. The good news today is that it has picked up a little bit of forward motion, moving about 13 miles per hour now. I think that as it continues over Alabama and into northern Mississippi and Port Arkansas that it will slow down.
So we don't want to lose that focus on the potential rainfall there. We have talked to the hydrologists at the National Weather Service and we're still talking about a threat of some minor river flooding at this time.
MYERS: You know, we talked about the computer models that we run here at CNN. We look at them all the time. What are those computer models telling you this morning about -- because a lot of times they don't agree. What are they saying? How are they differing and where are they taking this storm now?
MAYFIELD: Well, basically they're taking it north-northwestward this morning and then gradually turning back to the northwest and then more towards the north after that. I might add that the computer models did a very good job here the day before land fall as they forecast and focused on the Florida Panhandle area.
MYERS: They sure did. And except for the very early forecasts of the tropical storm watch for Louisiana, this storm was really very forecastable, is it not?
MAYFIELD: About as well as they come.
MYERS: Yes. MAYFIELD: We might add that, you know, the way the mouth of the Mississippi sticks out there in the Gulf, it was still moving northwestward at the time and that was the closest land mass and that's what prompted the watches and warnings there for that southeastern tip of Louisiana.
MYERS: I think I have a couple more minutes. This storm really stalled over the Gulf of Mexico for possibly even 24 hours. What caused that and how do people know where it's going after that? It goes left, it goes right. What's it going to do after that? How did that happen? How did it stall?
MAYFIELD: Chad, I really like to see a well defined steering currents and in this case the steering currents just collapsed. We did everything we could to make a good forecast and that included flying our Miller (ph) jet aircraft in the environment around the storm for about three nights there to sample that environment, that river of air, if you will.
That data got into the computer models and once it did, the steering currents became established that everything would take it up into the Panhandle area. It actually made land fall right in the middle of the warning area.
MYERS: Yes, it sure did.
Max, thank you very much for your time. Unfortunately, it's only August. We will be seeing you many more times this year, I'm sure.
MAYFIELD: Yes, sir. Thank you.
MYERS: Thanks for your time and your help -- back to you guys.
KAGAN: Chad and Max, thank you very much.
You talked about that cell, Chad, over Panama Beach. Our Mark Potter is right in the middle of it and let's go to him live -- Mark, good morning.
MARK POTTER, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning.
Well, we're watching that rain band that Chad was talking about. You can see it on the radar. We're actually looking at it. It's about to hit us in a couple of minutes so I'm going to talk fast.
We're also watching the tide coming in. The waves are still kicked up and the tide is rising. We haven't hit high tide yet and we'll keep an eye on whether this has any impact on any of the buildings along the coast.
Now, I don't want to over emphasize the weather changes here. This is clearly the diminishing side of the storm. That's the point I want to make. The worst of this storm hit the area around midnight Central Time and it's been diminishing ever since.
The, we actually have had some blue sky here a little while ago. We've had a little rain off and on, diminishing winds. Right now we're about to get hit with another band, though, so we're bracing for that.
The officials here in the Panama City area are meeting now to assess the damage. They've got people out around the area scouting it out, scouting out the neighborhoods and the roads. But preliminarily what they're telling us is that the damage has been relatively minimal. There have been some scattered power outages in Bay County. They had some wires down, knocked down by tree limbs, some road flooding, some neighborhood flooding. But nothing substantial and nothing like they expected.
About 50 people went to the two shelters here overnight. Those shelters were set up purely for people to go to on a voluntary basis if they thought their homes were unsafe. There were no evacuation orders, no evacuation recommendations. In fact, the officials here were telling people that once nightfall fell, wherever they were, stay put. They didn't want them out on the roads last night during the storm. And it seemed that people obeyed that. We looked around then and there weren't that many people out.
Most importantly, no reported serious injuries and no fatalities here and the authorities say they dodged the bullet on this one -- back to you.
KAGAN: That is good news, indeed.
Mark Potter in Panama City Beach, Florida, thank you so much -- Leon.
HARRIS: All right, let's go up a little bit north and west from there. Southern Alabama is bracing also for heavy rain and some possible flooding as Barry moves through there.
Joining us now on the phone from Montgomery, Alabama is Doug Peters. He is a meteorologist at WAKA-TV. How is it looking so far for you folks, Doug?
DOUG PETERS, WAKA METEOROLOGIST: Well, pretty much a lot of rain happening across central Alabama right now and we're looking at rainfall amounts in, according to the rainfall estimate on the Doppler radar any from about three to even five plus inches of rain. And most of that is occurring in a stretch from basically about Covington County all the way through southern Montgomery County at this time.
And we have had a few reports of some power lines down and even in Greeneville -- that's in Butler County here in Alabama -- a report the 911 system is down there and a few power lines and trees down in Coffee (ph) and Covington Counties and right around Andalusia (ph), as well.
So that's about all that we've had so far, with the exceptions of the heavier rain. I do expect to see more heavy rain across Alabama as we head through the next 24 hours.
HARRIS: Well, Doug, give the folks who are watching who may not be very familiar with, I guess, southern Alabama's landscape down there. How much rain do you think you're able to handle before you really have bad flooding problems down there? You say three to five inches isn't causing you too much trouble right now.
PETERS: No, not right now. But I think if we start to see another three to five inches of rain we'll probably be talking about some flood warnings on some local rivers. The rivers were in pretty good shape before the storm came and right now we'll be looking at, you know, another three to five inches of rain in some areas.
HARRIS: All right, it looks like by the end of the day you'll all be saying what drought?
PETERS: That's right.
HARRIS: We were just talking about that but a couple of weeks ago.
PETERS: Yes.
HARRIS: All right, good luck, Doug Peters, WAKA-TV, we'll keep our eyes and ears pealed for you -- Daryn.
KAGAN: Well, that could be the proverbial silver lining on these clouds, on Barry's clouds.
HARRIS: Yes.
KAGAN: Let's move southeast from there. Residents along the Florida Panhandle beginning to assess the damage from tropical storm Barry.
Our Ed Lavandera joining us from Fort Walton Beach, Florida with the latest on conditions there -- Ed, good morning to you.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Good morning, Daryn.
That silver lining you were talking about is right over there, a blue sky to the western side of the Fort Walton Beach area.
The major headlines from here is the wind is kind of steady. The surf is still up a little bit, but just a little bit to the east in Destin. Some power outages in a couple of communities over there. We're told that that could take several hours to repair.
We're joined now by Keith Nyers, who's the general manager of the Four Points Sheraton here along Fort Walton Beach.
What do you make of this? You're a veteran of all this.
KEITH NYERS, GENERAL MANAGER, SHERATON HOTEL: Well, we're blessed that the storm passed to the east of us. I mean we were right on the western side of the center of the eye, too. But we've got blue skies coming out right now. It looks like it's going to be a beautiful day at the beach.
LAVANDERA: And this is more than you expected, less than you expected?
KAGAN: It's about what I expected. I didn't expect there to be a major storm in this area.
LAVANDERA: All right, very good. A lot of the folks who have been working along the beach here took a lot of precautions and, of course, these guys are veterans of dealing with these types of storms. So quite honestly they say if this is the -- if you're going to be hit by a storm, this is the kind of storm you want to be hit by -- Daryn.
KAGAN: OK, Ed, you started with the silver lining of the blue sky that way. But turn around and look behind you. That looks like some pretty dark and ominous skies right behind you over the ocean. Or is that just the way it's looking on the camera?
LAVANDERA: Yes, that's been out there -- well, it's been that way for most of the morning and the wind is coming straight toward the east and we've seen a lot of clouds just kind of moving away and those clouds haven't gotten any closer to the shore. What we've seen grow, get closer, are the blue skies. So that's kind of what we're seeing here.
We can see, we've been talking a lot to folks in Panama City. So we've seen that rain there and over on the horizon that way we can make that out a little bit here.
But in Fort Walton Beach, a lot of folks starting to make their way out to the water and take their morning strolls. So they can't complain here.
KAGAN: OK, let's hope that's what lies ahead for you, as well.
Thank you so much, Ed Lavandera at Fort Walton Beach, Florida.
HARRIS: OK, that's a pretty good start.
KAGAN: Yes.
HARRIS: And, of course, we will be tracking this storm all day long right here on CNN so make sure you stay tuned here. There will be frequent updates this hour and, of course, all morning long.
Now, if you're away from the television for whatever reason, we will keep you informed on our Web site as well. Just click onto cnn.com.
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