Return to Transcripts main page

American Morning

Hurricane Michelle Causes Damage in Southern Florida

Aired November 05, 2001 - 10:43   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.
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: As we talked about at the end of last week, there was a significant weather story to discuss, Hurricane Michelle moving past Cuba still on her route. And Chad Myers is tracking the latest on that.

Chad, where we headed now?

CHAD MYERS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Bill, it was a major storm as it moved over Cuba. I mean, no kidding, a Category 4 hurricane. Close to the same strength that moved over Florida with Andrew, just a few miles per hour shy of Andrew as this moved over Cuba.

Now the storm is down to only 85 miles per hour, and I say that tongue and cheek because although that's only a Category 1 storm, we just had a 49 knot gust at Miami. So the storm is still spinning. It's still gaining strength now that it's back in the water.

What happened and why it's not as strong now as it was yesterday is that when it gets over land it loses its energy. It's like the gas runs out of the tank for just a little bit, but then the low moved back over water and the gas is refilled and the storm starts to rebuild itself.

Here's the latest radar picture right now and the storm is very close to Nassau. In fact, 20 miles, that's it. The eye only 20 miles southeast of Nassau with winds to 85 miles per hour.

I just had a ship report, a boat out there, one that I wouldn't want to be on, a ship report at 87 knots. Now if you do some multiplication, that's about 100 miles per hour. So this storm, although it is going to miss most of south Florida, other than some rain and some flooding and some wind, it is still going to cause havoc across Nassau, Paradise Island, across the outer islands of the Bahamas and then finally out to sea as it moves away. We are going to have a significant weather maker there for the next couple of days. We're going to watch that beach erosion right through here, and John Zarrella's going to have more on that.

Back to you.

HEMMER: Chad, quickly before we let you go...

MYERS: Sure.

HEMMER: ... and go to John, any chance of that storm moving east and then coming back west or north or not?

MYERS: Absolutely not.

HEMMER: OK.

MYERS: No, there's a big trough in the upper atmosphere, those steering winds. Now that this thing is moving 17 miles an hour, once you get it moving in one direction, it takes a lot and there's not enough to turn it back our way.

HEMMER: Got it. Thank you, Chad.

MYERS: Sure.

HEMMER: Southern Florida, Hollywood Beach and CNN's John Zarrella who felt and watched things come ashore.

John, good morning, how are things now?

JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Bill, we've been watching for the past several hours of the situation has really begun to deteriorate as we've approached high tide here. You can see here behind me, this is about what's left of a lot of the beach. It's like a river racing in from the ocean right now. People wading out there, but the police have been up and down Hollywood Beach on this little beach road. They have been telling people to get off of the beach, to get out of here. They're concerned that power lines could still come down.

We're going to swing around a little bit, try and give you a shot of what's actually happening, how deep and how fast this water is racing right down the street up into a couple of the shops that are right along the edge of the water. You can see the shops are under -- right lapping up at the bottom of the shop doors there. And the water, Bill, is actually racing down the street and out from here all the way from this beach road out to A1A, which is the main road that runs of course north and south along the ocean road here.

So a significant event -- a significant erosion event. Much of the beach has already been washed away by about a week and a half of heavy wind pounding from the east before Hurricane Michelle got here. This adding insult to injury, not what they needed, and quite frankly, this may be worse than what they expected to happen with the high tide. But again, Bill, an indication of just how powerful Hurricane Michelle is even some 150 miles to the east of us causing all of this beach erosion damage and coastal flooding -- Bill.

HEMMER: Cuba -- and the reports out of Cuba and Central America last week, possibly a stroke of good luck in that part of Florida though too with that storm moving off the shore there.

John, thanks. John Zarrella there in southern Florida.

TO ORDER A VIDEO OF THIS TRANSCRIPT, PLEASE CALL 800-CNN-NEWS OR USE OUR SECURE ONLINE ORDER FORM LOCATED AT www.fdch.com