Hurricane Sally is big news this morning with two and a half feet of rain expected and life-threatening storm surge. CNN New Day is keeping on top.
"Joining me now is Ken Graham, he's the director of the National Hurricane Center. Director, thank you very much for being with us. We just spoke to Ed Lavendera in Mobile and Gary on Pensacola Beach. The floodwaters are coming up and the wind gusts, I know, are approaching 100 miles an hour there. What is he going through? What can he expect? Talk to us about what the storm is doing," John Berman said.
Graham said because the storm is so slow, nothing will go away anytime soon.
"If you think about the eye wall itself, the eye wall is getting the maximum winds of the hurricane, right over Gulf Shores, fully in the eye, so it's going to get calm for a little bit, but really urging residents, if you're in that eye, don't go outside. Because what's going to happen is, the back edge of that eye wall is on the way. And it's actually approaching the coastline. Just a dangerous situation there. But the wind, the torrential rainfall, the storm surge, already seeing some gauges get up 4 to 5 feet with the storm surge. so all aspects of this, just a serious situation all around."
Graham explained how much rain we can expect from the storm.
"We can see areas with 15 to 20, a large area there, 20 to 25. I would not be surprised at some point getting over 30 inches of rain in some of these areas. That's the coastal part of it, and not just coastal, with time because of that slow movement, 6 to 10 inches through portions of Alabama, Georgia, even heavy rains in western South Carolina," he said.
"John, when you look at this track, it's so slow. It's going to take a while. This through friday. so through friday, we finally get into south carolina. so very slow movement and that cause just more rainfall.
"Just to put that in perspective, that's 2 1/2 feet of rain. You're particularly concerned with the storm surge. This storm is moving so slowly. Why and where?" Berman said.
"That slow movement has more time to pile that water in. That's what happened. You think about Pensacola, I just looked at the tide gauge a little bit ago, getting really close to about 5 feet of storm surge in that area. We're looking at 4 to 7," he said.
"Any area, right around the center and to that right side is where you get that onshore flow. There's waves on top of that. and 4 to 7 feet, that's water up your pant leg, that's water over the surface. So just going to continue and pile the rainfall on top of it."
He stressed to residents to stay inside, it was too dangerous to go outside.
