Top Story with Tom Llamas - Friday, October 9, 2026

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

Tonight's Top Story has the latest breaking news, political headlines, news from overseas and the best NBC News reporting from across the country and around the world Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See https://pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

Tonight, monster hurricane Isayas moments away from landfall. Evaculation order has been issued for this area. Please evacuate immediate. The dangerous storms slamming the Gulf Coast, Alabama and Florida's panhandle in the bullseye. Isaiiase packing life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds, floods, and even possible twisters. You could have tornadoes hundreds of miles away. Nobody is going to be in the clear for this.

Tens of thousands under evacuation orders. Airports shut down, major bridges closed off, gas stations running dry, and grocery stores cleared out. Millions hunkering down, hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. It's a little scary, but I hope everyone's okay. Never gets through it. States of emergency declared in Alabama, Mississippi, Georgia, and Florida. The winds get worse every minute.

Hurricane hunters in the eye of the storm so large you can see it from space. At this hour, thousands of National Guard troops on standby as the first hurricane of the 26 Atlantic season quickly closes in. This is a special edition of Top Story, Hurricane Isayas. Here's Tom Yamas. And good evening. We come on the air. Hurricane Isaias is a powerful Category 3 storm charging directly towards the Gulf Coast. And right now, landfall is imminent with conditions across the region rapidly deteriorating. Here's a look at that massive storm as the aisle wall begins to push ashore, packing 120-mile-per-hour winds. The storm expected to slam the panhandle with a direct hit. Landfall could be anywhere from Pensacola to Destin.

Mandatory evacuations, curfews, enclosures stretching from Alabama to Florida, even some tornado watches in effect at this hour. And we're getting our first look at the storm's wrath, choppy waves crashing onto shore, flags and trees whipping in those hurricane force winds. and this new video of a gas station in Destin, torn apart by those severe winds. The outer bands battering Florida leading to these dangerous scenes on the road. Bridges like this one in Pensacola shut down to do unsafe conditions. The time to leave, though, has gone. While thousands have fled, many others are choosing to ride out the storm officials across the region warning to seek shelter immediately.

The biggest threat for coastal cities, the dangerous storm surge, some areas bracing for up to nine feet of rising water. The brute force of this major hurricane scene here on a specialized ocean drone capturing the wrath of Isaias from sea, waves topping 60 feet. And hurricane hunters with the view from inside the eye sending back crucial real-time data. Our Bill Karen, standing by to track it out minute by minute. But we want to begin tonight with Jesse Kirsch, who is live from Destin, Florida, as the conditions there have been deteriorating by the minute. Jesse, you've been on the ground there all day. I see you've come in a little bit from the shoreline. What are you seeing?

Yeah, Tom, you can see behind me here, the tree is really getting kicked around by the wind gusts. And I'm looking over on the bridge off in the distance here, and that is one of those indicators. We're going to be keeping an eye on to see how bad things are getting, because they are going to eventually shut down traffic. And it actually looks like that might be happening right now, because there are a couple vehicles that are standstill on there, and I saw a first responder vehicle with blue police lights going by a short time ago. We're right on the waterfront here in Destin.

We are on the right side, the dirty side of the expected landfill. That means we're going to get some of the worst impact here. And the time being, the water is still staying out there. But you can see parts churning up here. So that's something we're going to be keeping an eye on. And I have to tell you, from where we were, about two hours ago, with them a short time ago. At this point, it is a time to hunker down.

And he also re-emphasize something we've heard multiple times in recent days. will be a point tonight where first responders will not be coming for people because it will be too dangerous for them to attempt to get to people. And so there is going to be a point where people are going to be on their own, especially in barrier island communities, where there is no immediate way to get a first responder to unit and a way for you to get off of those islands once they shut down from this. There's already a good amount of debris flying around here on the ground mostly, but once those wind gusts really kick up even further, we can expect that stuff to be. No airport Tom.

Jesse, walk us through the conditions there, right? Because it doesn't appear to be too severe at this moment right now. I mean, the rain seems to be picking up and the wind seems to be hitting you. But you've covered enough storms to know that I guess we still got to wait a little longer before landfall and before conditions really start to get very dangerous. You're still trying to talk to me. Lost the call. See if I can get the signal back.

Looks like we might have lost Jess. Jesse, still with me? Okay, I think we lost Jesse. Let's go to Bill Carrons right now. Bill, the point I was making there with Jesse, I know he's covered a lot of storms. It doesn't look too bad just yet. The rain, not that intense and the winds, I mean, just starting to pick up. And that's good.

You know, we don't want that area to get decimated because he's in Destin. And Destin is, you know, if you had to put an X on a map where we're going to see possibly the highest winds and the worst storm surges right where we put Jesse. And that would be in about two hours from now. So we're thinking landfall roughly in about an hour and a half to two hours from now. So this was the latest in the hurricane center. I was wondering if they would knock it down. from a category three to a category two. They're giving us hourly updates now. We're finally starting to see weakening taking place in the eye where the strongest winds are. This was always in the

forecast that it was going to weaken at landfall. It's just this thing was stubborn. It got really strong and it's just been refusing to give up its strength, but it's now finally doing so as it moves onshore. So we'll see if it makes landfall as a two or a three. It really doesn't matter. The damage is pretty similar. As far as the timing goes, I mentioned that in the next probably about roughly hour and a half, two hours we get the landfill. Notice there's nothing back behind it. That's it. Even where Jesse is, it's only going to rain for about another two or three hours, and then you're just going to get occasional showers after that. By 1 a.m., this storm is done with Florida. Still windy, but all the rain is done. And it's still a hurricane, though. So even far inland into southern Alabama,

the gust will be strong enough to knock down trees and have power outages. These are the current gusts. You know, this is where Jesse is located. They are having some gusts up to 62 miles per hour. His crew is smart. They probably have him in a little sheltered, kind of protected area, so he's not out in the full open. and, you know, just like where most of our sensors are. There's also a tornado watch, happy to say. I don't see any active tornado warnings, but this will be spotty. On and off for the next 24 to 36 hours,

we'll continue to watch that. So here's a closer view of the eye, and I want you to notice it was more circular. It kind of looked more like a ball, like a regular eye. And then notice how now all of a sudden it's kind of getting elongated. That's finally these strong upper-level winds, shearing it apart and kind of blowing it apart a little bit. It's still very intense on this northern side.

You see these purples in here. This is where we're going to get the destructive winds when it moves on shore. So this is roughly about 29. So they're 20 to 30 miles due south of where Jesse is. That's where the strongest winds are. So we have about another hour, hour and a half to go. And because of that threat now moving in, the National Weather Service has issued what's kind of rare. They call them an extreme wind warning.

It's almost like a tornado warning, but for a huge area. That goes all the way from Pensacola through Destin, right, you know, Fort Walton Beach area over to Freeport. In everyone in this region, they're telling them go to interior rooms, get away from windows because it could be smashed. That's what you get when you have a major hurricane making landfall. We only see that with those. And Tom, the final thing is we're getting closer to this landfall. We're going to watch these storm surge. We've been saying the max potential would be five to nine feet. Right now we have a surge of about two to three feet to the right of center. Of course, we don't get that worst surge, Tom, until right as it makes landfall. So these numbers will be watching them closely as we go throughout the next hour or two. You have you here, you were showing the giant map of Esaias, and you saw how big that the eye was and it was breaking up. There was that cluster of what looked like lightning. What exactly is that there in the bottom of right hand, if you will? Yeah, so this is, you know, we just got a new image in right here. But all of this is active lightning strikes on the very, very western edge of this.

So this is kind of the boundary where we kind of have dry air coming in from the west. Notice there's no rain out here at all. And then we have all the moisture from the storm. And those are all colliding right here. And when air collides, it rises and it makes thunderstorms. And that's why we have almost like a cold front feature here, but with a ton of lightning out there. When that comes through, that also could bring down some very strong gusts down to the surface.

And Tom, probably the other thing that I want to mention, I know we're just focusing on the landfall because that's where all our correspondence are, and that's usually where the most extreme damages. This storm is going to get larger, and the footprint of the wind is going to be much bigger tomorrow than it even is today. I mean, we have high wind warnings from northern Georgia, including Atlanta all the way up through the mountains in North Carolina. So we're going to see power outages, not just at the coast, but tomorrow, if we get these gusts to 50 to 60 miles per hour

in the Appalachians in North Georgia and Northern South Carolina, we will have power outages and stuff to deal with well inland, too. And then, Bill, before you go, we expect Jesse and his team where they are and all those residents across the Gulf Coast in that Destin area. You said in about an hour to an hour and a half, it's going to get really intense. That'll be the worst of it. Yeah, I would say about an hour from now till about three hours from now is when most of the extreme damage will take place and then after that things will begin to wind down. So it is a quick hitter. I mean it's moving at almost 20 miles per hour. So that's the good part of us and there's no backside to it. The backside is extremely weak. I think we got

Jesse Kirsch again. His comms are back up. Jesse can you hear us? Yep, I got you. Tom. I'm just taking shelter here for a moment because we were basically like a wind tunnel. So he's got to really kick it up and I'm clocking one over 20 miles per hour. It looks like as that storm picks up, those coms with Jesse and his team are going to be a little tough. We think we'll be able to lock him in very soon. I want to bring in Florida's Lieutenant Governor Jay Collins, who joins Top Story live tonight on this very important night there in Florida. Lieutenant Governor, thanks for joining us. Where are you joining us from?

Are you hunkering down in Tallahassee tonight? No, I'm in actually over to worst Tampa tonight. I had a series of events around the state. But look, our hearts, our minds, our parents, our parents, our parents, our parents. prayers are with the people over in the panhandle. It's going to be a hard one. Quick hitting, thank goodness. Yeah, what if any reports?

Have you gotten any reports? I know we're still about an hour out of the real danger. Have you gotten any early reports of any damage or anything concerning across the Gulf Coast? Well, look, there's always little damage as the tide start rising and the storm starts churning. But in terms of major things, no, I've not had anything come across my purview yet. but I think, unfortunately, it's coming. You know, Florida takes a serious.

This one kind of popped up kind of quickly. It was going kind of fast. At one point, I think only like two days ago, President Trump had no idea there was even a hurricane. And I bring that up because it might have taken some people in your state by surprise, too. Did you guys have enough warning, enough time to prepare, and did people have enough time to get out? Yeah, there's been plenty of time to prepare.

You know, there's a little bit of a state of, you know, hey, we've seen every hurricane before in Florida sometimes, because we could hit so many times, but we've been very aggressive in telling people, look, you've got to listen, leave, and you'll live. If we're told to evacuate, it's important to do that. But as a state, look, we've got 400 state guard up and working already. 5,000 National Guard on standby, 6,000 utility workers ready to go, over 1,000 generators, over 250 pieces of equipment.

If you want to find more information, what's in the area, go to Florida disaster.org for up-to-date information. We know we have evacuations from Escambia all the way over Walton and Okalusa, Taylor, Wakula, Franklin Bay, and Gulf. Some are mandatory. Some are, if you want to go. But either way, I hope and pray that people evacuated. And if not, stay in place, stay safe, and listen to your local authorities and make sure that you're prepared for what's to come. Have you been able to reach out to any teams that are either in Pensacola or Destin tonight?

any of those mayors? Yeah, so we've spoken to many people on the ground there. You know, they take this job very serious. So we have incredible leadership in those counties. We have incredible law enforcement in those counties. And, you know, my ask of everybody is, as this is going on, please, if you see law enforcement, first responders out there doing what they do, let them do their job, don't get in their way, make sure that you let them go out and do whatever the mission is.

I know we want to help, but sometimes they've got to move with that speed and that pace and let them do their thing. This storm, thank goodness, is going to come through like a freight train fast. It'll be out of the area, and people will be out there doing what we do best, which is taking care of our people. Florida's governor, lieutenant, governor, I should say, Jay Collins. Jay, thank you so much for joining us. I want to bring in the former mayor of Pensacola, Governor Robbins, should say Grover Robinson. He and his wife are riding out the storm in their home there. Grover, I understand you lost power earlier today.

Did you come back? It looks like it is. The lights look like they're on there. We did lose power, but it's back on. So we're, hello, can you hear me? I'm sorry. I got you. Yeah, I got you, Grover.

Okay. We did lose power earlier today. We're back on. And as you can see, probably the trees above me are dancing. It's gotten pretty intense here in the last probably hour. But we still have power, and I was shocked that we do at this point. but happy to be joining you. And it's just one of those days.

We have a lot of these. We have these every now and then in Schenby County, and we know what to do. I think the lieutenant governor said it well. We know to prepare. We know to stay inside, and we know to ride it out. And that's what my wife and I are trying to do.

So, Grover, how far from the coast are you? How far how many miles away you live from the beach? I'm probably about 15 miles from the Gulf. I'm probably about two miles from the bay. So, but in Pensacola, we do have, we do have hills. Our house sits about 85 feet above, which I know to most of your viewers probably sounds like still sea level, but for us, that's quite a bit of elevation. We have hills here.

My family's lived in Pensacola forever. We've never lived on the water, but we always live it on the hills. This is why you live on the hills. All right, Grover, stand by for us. We're going to come back to you. We have a reporter who's out in Pensacola, out in the elements. We want to talk to her. Carol Suarez from Telemundo, joined.

just now live. Carol, looks like you're getting hit pretty hard there. Tell us what you're seeing and what you're feeling. Tom, this is really bad. Conditions are getting worse and worse as we speak. And this is just the outer bend of Isayas hurricane. We were here earlier and we spoke with many people from here from Pensacola. Actually used to this kind of natural disasters, but they said this wasn't going to be that bad, but I can tell you that it's hard to me to explain. Yeah, Carol, please be careful when you... But this is what we're... So Carol, tell us exactly where exactly are you guys stationed,

where are you reporting live from? What part of Pensacola? A few miles from the bridge, which is actually closed due to the strong winds. And we got here like three hours ago and everything seemed really calm, let's say. But conditions started getting worse and worse as we saw a few minutes ago, how some pieces of roof are starting to fly over and people are actually really surprised. We saw a couple of people walking a few. We didn't evacuate and this is one of the areas that authorities asked people to evacuate.

Yeah, that's one of the dangers to get the people who are a little bit cavalier out there. Carol, so when we look out of your shot, it looks to be almost golden behind you. But I know sometimes with the camera and the iris, it can do that, but I'm not out there with you. I mean, have the winds and sort of the way it looks out there behind you in the bay, has it all changed? I'm sorry, could you repeat that? Yeah, just behind you, it sort of looks incredibly ominous, almost like a gold or a dark brown. It's changing pretty fast behind you. I'm just wondering if that was all the wind moving in and what you're seeing behind you.

If we just received a few minutes ago, a wind gas warning that it was extremely dangerous winds here in Pennsylvania. Pensacola. We know that the area of the Pensacola beach was evacuated and they closed the bridge like an hour or two ago people was not able to go back there, but they were actually able to leave. I'm also seeing a lot of sheriff patrolling around and trying to make sure that people are staying in shelters but but yeah that's what we see in here Tom. It's just really hard for me to describe what that they're strong of all of these waiting from his ideas. We can see it, Carol. No, we can see it in your shot. Carol Suarez from Telemundo. We'll check back with you a little later.

Please stay safe out there, okay? I'm going to bring back the former mayor of Pensacola again. Our good friend Grover Robinson, who was reporting live from his living room just a few minutes ago. Grover was looking pretty bad there by the bay. I don't know if you could see Carol's shot, but it looks like it's getting, was that, is the power flickering there or what's happening? Power is flickering. So yes, it is getting bad.

I mean, I can, if I turn to my left and look outside, you can kind of see the trees dancing above my head there. But it is really the most intense it's been all day. It's going to probably get worse for probably the next three hours. But that's why we did all our prep this morning and we're hunkered down and we're ready to ride it out. Grover, your former mayor, what are the big concerns for your communities there? Obviously, those coastal communities on the water, you hope people evacuate, power outages. You hope those line crews have been stationed in hotels nearby so they can get working. Anything else you guys are concerned about?

Well, clearly, I think flooding is the biggest thing, storm surge and also low-line areas that rain. That's number one. Then you do worry about wind damage and what happens. Structures, you know, you don't want to lose more housing because it just makes it more difficult. So all of this is things that I know the team here. We've got a great team of county commissioners and our mayor and city council members. They're doing a great job. our sheriff and all of our police force,

they're doing, they've been out there doing those kind of things, making sure that we're ready. Tomorrow's a big day. We'll just have to get back up and get out. And you can see it's just, it's always these things go by, and it just looks terrible, and you just got to pick yourself up.

That's part of living on the Gulf Coast, as you know, you've got to have a lot of resiliency. You know, it's challenging. I know people probably all over look and say, how do you deal with this? But for us, it's like you're probably dealing with a snowstorm. We're used to it. We know to get press.

We've been prepping for the last 24 hours. We're done. We're now sitting it out, and we know we'll get up tomorrow and we'll get it all cleaned up. All right, Grover, you stay safe out there. I hope you guys are stocked up with water and food. And we'll check back with you, I think, later in the broadcast to see how it's going. We're going to have much more ahead on the special edition of Top Story. Coming up, we'll hear from a family set to ride out the hurricane at their farm in Alabama.

As Isayas bears down on the Gulf Coast. Stay with us. Back down with our breaking coverage of Hurricane Isaias, the dangerous. Cat 3 storm barreling on tonight. And one of the states under threat Alabama. I want to bring in Zoe Blair from our Birmingham affiliate. She's in Gulf Shores right now. So just a little west there of Destin and Pensacola. So Zoe, what do you see now? There doesn't look too bad where you are. Yeah, Tom, it's not too bad right now. It's actually calmed down. We have been dealing with very intense winds most of today. We're actually in a parking garage now trying to hunker down and stay

out of those winds because they were so much that they were trying to blow the camera over, trying to blow my hat off. just a lot that we've seen some debris flying through from some trees because of those winds. But we're also seeing just a little bit of storm surge out here. I'm going to step out and show you the waves. This is the Gulf. These are not normal waves for the Gulf. I was born and raised here. I grew up going to this beach.

These are not normal waves for this area. They are huge. They are choppy. You can see that wind that I was talking about is bringing up a mist off of the waves. It's also stirring up some of that sand as well. And that storm surge is probably the biggest concern tonight. When we first started with this storm, there was a potential for a seven-foot storm surge, obviously with the storm moving east.

There, I believe that potential has lessened just a little bit. But the city has been putting out sand berms, anything they can do to kind of prevent any future flooding in this area. Yeah, Gulf Shore is such a beautiful area. I've spent a lot of time there as well. Did people that were there possibly on vacation, it's sort of random, it's the fall, but it's still a little warm there? Were people evacuating and heating those evacuation orders? Yeah, Tom. Governor K.I.

He actually issued an emergency evacuation order requiring all tourists and visitors to leave. And the folks here were taking that very seriously. Hotels were told that they had to send their guests home. When we were coming down here from Birmingham, it's about a four-hour drive. The entire Northvale interstate was packed the entire time with folks evacuating. We actually had to fight with our hotel to be able to stay here, to be able to stay on the island. And so everyone was taking this evacuation order very seriously, really taking the threat of this storm very seriously. You know, and it's pretty interesting. We just had a reporter on from Telemundo who was 30 miles east of where you were.

It's a completely different story. It sort of speaks to how strange these hurricanes sometimes can be if you're on the dirty side, which, you know, tonight is going to be the right side of that storm as it crashes there into Florida. And then in Gulf Shores, which is just, again, 30 miles. You guys are probably going to get hit a little harder, a little later. but please take care and stand by and let us know if things develop there. It looks like you're in a secure spot and you're surrounded, right, to stay safe reporting throughout the night? Yes, sir, absolutely. We are going to be here reporting as long as we safely can, keeping up with what happens. Right now, like I said, the conditions seem a little better, but it's been very off and on.

I mean, I'm sure you can actually hear that. The wind is picking up right now, so anything could happen. We are prepared for anything, and we're going to do whatever we can. to stay safe but keeping people informed. All right, Zoe, you stay safe out there. We're back in a moment with the latest track on Isayas. We'll hear from a storm chaser right in the path of that powerful hurricane. Stay with us.

All right, welcome back to a special edition of Top Story. We're bringing you live coverage of this major Cat 3. Hurricane Isaias, the eye wall now making its way on shore. And all eyes on this massive category three storm charging ashore as we speak winds 115 miles per hour. The video from the ground just coming into the newsroom. This street in Miramar completely. underwater as the eye of the storm gets closer. Miramar Beach, we should make that distinction.

And in Pensacola, heavy rain just battering down, the region bracing for what it could be a direct hit. I want to go back to our Jesse Kirsch, who was in Destin, Florida. Jesse, we talked to you 28 minutes ago. It didn't look that bad. It looked like just a little storm. And now look at what you're seeing behind you. Yeah, Tom, visibility has rapidly deteriorated. I would say it's around 150 yards, 200 yards max right now. You might be able to see behind me off in the distance and actually I'm looking under monitor so I can see that you're able to. You see those headlights, that is a bridge, and we are waiting to see when that completely shuts down. And these may be people who should not be going over.

They may be first responders who are shutting it down. We don't know for sure who they are. But the idea of going over a bridge like that right now, to me, does not seem like a good idea. And we know there's a point in which officials say the bridges will be shut down. That means not only are you not able to get across them, but they're not coming across them to get to you. And that is something that had been pushed so much ahead of this storm as often is, imploring people to get out before it was too late. We are now well past that point, Tom.

And you can see these palm trees just being tossed around right now. We'll see how long they last. And one of the things I'm going to be looking for is we're with you throughout the night here is there is a boat elevated out of the water over here. When we get the storm surge, when we get these sustained winds, what is going to happen to that boat? We'll see how much damage this storm can do to that watercraft right there. And I can tell you, thankfully, we haven't seen a soul down there.

And that is what officials want. They want people hunkering down, staying out of this right now. And you can just see, I mean, the way these rain bands are getting pushed around, and you can see it in the tree. And this is water dripping off at the side. It just shows you how strong the winds are. And we have moved to a location, giving our team better protection, because when it gets dark and when you get wind like this, right,

we've both been there, Tom. That debris can come out of nowhere. Yeah, Jesse. It looks like there's a lot of souls, though, still on that. that bridge. A lot of traffic surprising as this hurricane is probably an hour or an hour and a half from landfall. Jesse, walk our viewers through how you and your team are staying safe while reporting the storm to us. Looks like you guys are on a secure balcony there or in a parking garage or something. Yep, yeah, we're in a balcony this time around. And to be clear, that is not the Gulf right behind us.

So we've got, you know, some of the barrier island landforms over here. You've got a bridge. So we have, we're not going to see the immediate nine foot rush. But to be clear, We are way above nine feet, which, you know, would put us well past where the storm surges anticipated to potentially get here. It starts days ahead of time, Tom. It's getting the supplies you need. Water, non-perishable food, making sure you have rechargeable batteries so we can transmit to everyone watching back home right now, having extra fuel because the gas stations will shut down. Things that people may not think about if you've never been in a hurricane zone. You get cash because when the power goes out, you can't use a credit card, right?

All the things that you've got to think of ahead of time. And then it is scouting a location like this where we are protected on three sides can quickly get inside if we need it so that when things deteriorate, you're not first figuring that out. Because by the time you were trying to figure things out and things are bad, as you said it, Tom, hour by hour, even within the last 30 minutes or so, things are getting worse and worse. And that was what was warned about. And so there is no time to decide to make a plan when you realize that it's bad because at that point it is too late. so it starts days ahead of time, getting all the supplies, scouting out where you're going to be, starting on the waterfront when it's safe to do. So knowing as this storm is going to progress, and a huge shout out to our whole climate team,

that keeps us surprised at the situation as it develops so we know where to be, where not to be, and when to move to a spot like this. And we knew we need to get here around this time because it was when those wind gusts were going to really kick up. And we're waiting to see if we get wind gusts over 100 miles per hour here in Destin. And as you were talking about before, Tom, where the path of the storm is, we are on the right side, the dirty side, the worst side for the impacts of the wind and of the storm surge. And again, as you said, Tom, we're still waiting for it to come ashore. Yeah, and we've actually just, Bill Cairns was telling us that you got your first hurricane force wind gust, maybe about 10 minutes ago there in Destiny was about 75 miles per hour. If I can ask your photog, Carlos, to kind of, if you can give us more of a pan out from where you are, Jesse, we'd love to see more of what's behind you.

I'm going to bring Bill Karens in right now. Bill, we're watching Jesse's shot there. Tell us on the map where exactly, you know where Jesse's at, where he's stationed, and what he's going through right now. Yeah, so here's Destin. We just mentioned that wind gust up to 76. That's the highest gust on land that I've seen yet. That's first, you know, considered a hurricane forest gust.

The center is still about 30 miles to the south. So we got another hour and a half until we get to the center in the Destin area, and that was when the worst storm surge will come up. If you're watching the shot there, occasionally we could see the headlights on the the bridge and Jesse was kind of wondering, hey, I wonder who that is. And I mean to throw my own profession, you know, under the bus. But there's probably roughly about 300 to 400 storm chasers in this area. All of them are trying to get in the center of the storm as it makes and moves inland so they can get their little pressure sensors and they can say what the lowest pressure is. So those are

the people that are out driving right now. It's in an extreme wind warning. The police aren't driving around. The fire isn't driving around. Hopefully no residents are driving around. But if you do see vehicles, Likely they are storm chasers, and hopefully they know what they're doing and not putting themselves in harm's way. Yeah. Bill, that rain, though, is coming down. I mean, we were talking about how this is going to be a massive windmaker. That was the strong gusts what a lot of the meteorologists were talking about all week. But that rain is coming down tonight.

Yeah, and then we could get a, I don't think we're going to see, you know, anything like significant crazy flash flooding. But we're going to get the urban flooding with rainfall rates again, like when a landfalling system like this. So what we're actually looking at on radar here is the beam shoots out. out, and if it hits raindrops, it reports back how dense it is, and it gives it a color. So where it's more dense in thunderstorms, where you get huge raindrops, you see like the purple colors here, and the red is, you know, what we'd call, we label it heavy to moderate the light. And so this is just like, you know, torrential rain coming in, and you can see it collecting on the roof and, you know, dripping down.

Once we get past the center, there's not much rain with it. So any flooding that takes place, a flash flooding, especially in Florida, is going to take place within the next two to three hours because then the storm is moving out. Occasionally I like to view this map because this will show me if we have any live tornado warnings. And I see none right now, which is fantastic. We're hoping this is not like a prolific tornado producer. But as of now, we're not seeing any. The tornado watch goes until at least 9 o'clock.

They'll extend it. It'll go out through tonight and even through tomorrow morning. But just some strong storms, but nothing tornatic. The center, the kind of the area I'm tracking, it doesn't really have a well-defined eye anymore. The storm is finally weakening. It's a little too late. but it's finally beginning to weaken is somewhere in this vicinity here. So now maybe it moved in a little bit.

So we're probably roughly about 25 miles from the coast. It's moving at about 17 miles per hour. So the rough math is, you know, may an hour, hour and a half from now. And here's that extreme wind warning. You saw what our reporter looked like in Pensacola. In Pensacola, this forecast was about best case scenario for you. Yesterday it was making landfall right over the top of you. Today it shifted about 30 miles to the east.

Put you on the back side of the storm. But we saw a reporter blowing around there. That's no joke. There's going to be significant tree damage and power edges even there. But you're not worried about the storm surge. Where we're seeing the worst of the storm surge and the highest winds is going to be from right, which is right near Destin, Fort Walton Beach, over to Freeport southwards here and getting towards Panama City Beach. And we'll keep an eye on this map, too. This is our storm surge live map. These are all gauges on the coast that tell us what the water levels are.

So if you're at the beach, say, on a normal day and it was high tide, we know where that's supposed to be. Well, this is the difference between what it should be. So right now in Mobile Bay, the water is actually two and a half feet lower than it should be. That's called a blowout tide. The wind is coming from the north. It's blowing the water straight back out into the Gulf, so that water is extremely low. The opposite is happening on what we call the dirty side of the storm, as the water is being piled up on the coast.

Right now, we have a storm surge of 3.2 feet in Panama City Beach. We still have another hour, hour and a half, to landfall. High tide is approaching at 10.30 this evening. So all these things are kind of coming together where all of a sudden the water is going to start to become a concern as we see this making landfalls. Those are kind of the things, Tom, I have my eye on. All right, Bill, we thank you. Speaking of the dirty side, let's go back to Jesse, who's reporting live for us with his team there in Destin, Florida tonight as that hurricane gets closer and closer. Jesse, we're going to call you back in front of the camera if you can come back out.

Jesse, my question to you is the story's moving so fast. Are you noticing changes within 5, 10, 15 minute increments? because it's been stunning to see how much your shot changed in those 25 minutes. Yeah, I would tell you, Tom, it's been chunks of about 30 minutes to an hour. You had, you know, first it was intermittent gusts, then it was pretty steady gusts. Then they started kicking up, but they weren't constant. And now, I'd say for the last 15, 20 minutes, it has been this nonstop. There has been no break.

And that just speaks to the fact we're getting closer and closer. And I know you and Bill moments ago were talking about how we're, you know, getting closer to that landfall. And I want to tell you one of the things we're noticing, and you're talking about how we started getting the hurricane force winds here, I've started to notice the power lines shaking, the pole not shaking yet, but the line's shaking. And there are plenty of trees around here. So just, you know, one more thing to be concerned about if one of those snaps. I reached out just a short time ago. We'll see if we can get through to them because the text messages are starting to have trouble going through.

I just reached out to the mayor's office here to try to get a sense of who might still be out on those bridges if they are officially shut down. And what the mayor had told me earlier is once they shut the bridges down, that means the first responders are done here in this community too. And yesterday, we were in Pensacola. Oh, boy, we're getting a real good gust right now. When we were in Pensacola yesterday, Tom, their warning of people there was, it's so bad, we're even pulling our firefighters off of the barrier islands. Just trying to give people a sense of the risk they were worried about. The people who are looking at the data, making the public safety decisions, trying to get people out. So that was another community further west and north of where we are right now.

And we were originally targeting Pensacola, maybe. We made our way over here because of how the track of this storm changed, right? It's not just the direction. That's what we usually are focused on. And Bill knows a ton more about this than I do, but just having covered storms in recent years, the track is what we look at, I think, the most changing. But one thing that really opened our eyes is how this thing got stronger, how East Ayes got stronger, and has stayed stronger as it gets closer to shore, upping the concern about the storm surge. And Bill talking about all of the inland concerns, and that's something else we're going to be looking for.

And one of the issues with this storm is that there's also concern about tornadoes, right? And one of the things that we're going to be looking for is if the alerts we'd get are harder to get if the phones go down, Tom. Yeah, that is something you got to worry about there. All right, Jesse Kirsch, we're going to come back to you in a second. We're going to take a quick break. Coming up, more special coverage of Hurricane East Aeas. We'll hear from the head of an emergency management group in Alabama as this storm is set to make landfall any moment.

Stay with us. All right, we're back with our special coverage of Hurricane Isaiah coming to shore. Right now, I want to bring in Nicole Eubanks. She and her husband are riding out the storm with their three and six-year-old sons at their farm in Loxley, Alabama, which is just east of Mobile. We can see there you've just lost power. Nicole, we've, and you're smiling, though, which means your spirits are still up. Tell us what time did you lose power roughly, and what are hearing outside? So we lost power about maybe an hour ago. The winds are really, really strong

right now. The rain's coming down. I'm not sure. I know that we're not in the thick of it yet because we are in Alabama, but it's definitely intensifying out there. Yeah, so I know you have a couple of little kids out there. What exactly are you telling them and how do you making sure they're okay? My three-year-old fell asleep. I don't know how that happened, but he's sleeping. So my six-year-old, he wants to be outside right now in the storm and just kind of get his experience of it because it's his first one.

But as of right now, it's just a lot of wind, a lot of rain, but nothing too crazy. But like I said, it hasn't hit us yet. Yeah, our graphic up on screen says that you guys were in a volunteer. evacuation order section, is that correct? That's right. And you guys decided to hunker down just because you didn't think it was going to be that bad? Well, we have

a farm. We've got like 70-something animals to care for, so we are staying here for them, making sure that they're safe. How are they doing? And any idea? We can, so we boarded up the house with our, like,

our window coverings, and we've left the back door open so that we're able to see the animals out in the back. But they seem to be doing okay so far. We've got our don't like rain, but apparently they want to be out in the hurricane today, as well as the chickens, and the goats are hunkering down.

Goats are famous for not liking water at all. So they seem to be doing okay right now, but we're just not really in the worst of it yet, so I guess we're just going to have to wait and see. So you're out there in the farm when your power goes out, I don't know if you guys have experienced this before. How long, usually until you guys can get it back up? The last time Sally hit, we weren't expecting it.

A lot of people weren't here on the Gulf Coast. We didn't know that it was going to be that intense, and we didn't know that it was going to stay on top of us forever. So we were out of power for about 12 days, and at that point, we didn't have the farm animals that we have now. Everything on my social media is all about me learning as I go on this farm with our farm animals and are. So this is a first for us. It's definitely something new. I just hope that it's not going to be like Sally and that we're going to be out of power for 12 days because that's a lot of animals to

feed. That's a lot of animals to have water for when you don't have water. We're on a well, so we aren't able to get water if we need it. So we've just tried to prepare as much as we could. Yeah, I hope you guys get your power back up and I hope it's not too bad for you. We're going to check in now with Bill Cairns. He's going to give an update. So stay listening. He'll tell you what your area looks like. You saw what part of Alabama she was in there. Just, I think, she was just south or I should say, I think a little bit west of Mobile. And what are they expecting and what it's going to look like for them? So rainfall-wise, Alabama did really well on this. It really didn't have much in the way of any significant impact. So we just lost the sensor

at a mobiles. That's why this is blank. It happens during the storm. Some of these our weather sensors and temperature gauges do fail. So right now, they did have some gust up to about 58 miles per hour. That was kind of similar at the same time when the worst was with Pensacola. That's kind of when the center of the storm was the closest. So we're probably getting gusts at 50 to 60. I'm sure it sounds like it's howling occasionally. There's not a lot of rain. So that's kind of good. Just kind of the gust will come through. But after it gets dark and you still hear the house rattling and shaking a little bit, it can still cause some concern, obviously, for many reasons. I want to start talking also about, we've been focusing on the landfall, which is imminent.

We're waiting about northern eyewall is now coming onshore. But what happens as we go throughout the rest of the storm after landfall because it's still going to be a Category 1 1 in the morning all the way into southern portions of Alabama. And then we start talking about dense forests. And then we're going to talk about as the storm moves northwards, once we're done calling it a tropical system about tomorrow afternoon, then it's going to be just a regular old big storm with a lot of high winds all the way up through the Appalachian Mountain chain all the way down into Florida. A lot of areas are going to have wind gusts into that 50 mile per hour range. And that's the magic number for locations with trees, and higher elevations could even be higher than that.

So we're not going to see Haleen in the mountains of North Carolina, but we will see down trees, and we will have power outages, and we will actually have a chance of getting even up to six inches of rain here, northern portions of Georgia and also western North Carolina. This is kind of the timeline here. So as we go through 8 p.m. tomorrow, very heavy torrential rain in the North Carolina coast, areas of torrential rain from Charlotte northwards to rowing up into the mountains, and any of these bands back down during the day through areas of Georgia, This is where we could see isolated tornadoes.

We're hoping it's not going to be a big prolific tornado producer, but it could be. Then as we go throughout the day on Sunday, all of this rain heads up through the northeast. So people in the northeast, you don't have to worry about significant flooding. But for your weekend plans, your Saturday? Perfect. Thumbs up. Great. Fall activities, have fun.

But for your Sunday, unfortunately, it means another rainy day is going to come and head your way. And the tornado threat, this is the map for tomorrow. About 5 million people at risk. A good chunk of portions of Georgia and also South Carolina. isolated tornadoes, make sure you have your safety plan in place and make sure you have an ability to get your alerts. Hopefully not too many people losing power in that area, Tom. So they should be able to get their alerts on their phone or on their weather radio. Bill, I want to thank you for that. I want to go to Mobile, Alabama. It's under a state of emergency,

a curfew going in effect at 7 p.m. Mobile County Emergency Management Agency's Mike Evans, he's the director there joins us now. Mike, how's it going tonight? Any surprises? Yeah, hey, no real surprises. You know, anytime we have these types of storms, they're all different, but they're all dangerous. And so that's the message to our citizens and our residents here. Treat them all, you know, with the respect that they're dangerous. And your main objective is the safety of you and your family and your friends. So we've been preaching to prepare for two days, you know, get the things you need. We've been talking about being in a safe place. You know, we have quite a few people that live in storm surge areas. We have quite a few

people in very flood-prone areas, a little inland, and we have people in manufactured homes. So the message to them has been go to a safe location, more inland in the county, go stay with a friend, family, or relative. But we did open some shelters. We have three shelters open in the mid part of the county in safe areas, and we know we have residents that have taken shelter in those. We help with some transportation to and from. And we're at the point now that it's, you know, it's going to be on top of us soon. So, you know, we'll start shutting down. You know, it'll get to the point with the wind, the tropical storm force winds. It's not safe for even public safety officials to be out. And so, you know, we still urge everybody to get to

that safe place and be prepared. We are seeing some power outages. We had a lot of rain in the last last week. So it's made things problematic. So we're getting some trees down, some power down. All right. Mike Evans there in Mobile at the Center for Emergency Management Control. We appreciate you being on top story tonight. We're going to be right back. This is an NBC News special report. Here's Tom Yamas. And good evening. We are coming on the air with some breaking news. Hurricane In East Ayes, nearing landfall as a major cat-3 storm. The eye wall moving onshore right now, taking direct aim at Florida's panhandle. Video shows powerful winds battering Florida as the monster hurricane packs 115 mile-per-hour winds. The situation rapidly deteriorating along the coast,

millions on alert for life-threatening storm surge up to nine feet in some parts. Right now, more than 300,000 customers are without power. We're getting new reports of damage. This gas station in Destin, Florida ripped apart. You'll see it there. And we're also getting the latest track from Bill Caron's who's standing by for us. I want to go first to Jesse Kirsch is in the storm zone. And Jesse, this is just the beginning right now, what you're seeing and feeling and all those residents there in Destin as well. That's right, Tom.

And I just spoke with our climate team telling me we've had at least a 76-mile-per-hour wind gust here in Destin, Florida. And our team is still seeing lightning in the eye wall of Isayas. And what that means is that this storm is not giving up, as it may be. makes its way towards shore. We have been seeing these trees getting pummeled, tossed around right now. We'll see how long they can last. And we're keeping an eye as well on a boat that is above the water on stilts, but is still hovering over the water here right now.

And as the water keeps churning and the storm surge, which is already rising, approaches potentially nine feet here. We'll see if that boat can hold on a short time ago. We actually just spoke with a gentleman who came knocking on our door to see if he could check on the boat. It says it's one of his. He says he has a business with a lot of boats, and they have been fiercely working to get everything out of the water if they can, and they ran out of time. He told me they didn't wait to find out if Destin was in the path. He said as soon as he heard about a storm in the Gulf, they started getting things ready, but there was not enough time.

And so that is just one example of people trying to get the preparations done as quickly as possible. Authorities have been pleading with people to get it done by early today, noting that conditions would deteriorate rapidly, definitely what we are seeing. It is dark now, but I can tell you while there was still some light visibility, we're shrinking on us. And he can maybe see off in the distance some headlights on that bridge. The mayor here in Destin had told me earlier, once winds hit a certain sustained speed, no one is coming for you. First responders are not going out. They're not going over that bridge. And I don't know if you can hear it, but the wind is howling that much more right now, Tom. We're going to be looking to see if debris flies. We've had the power go out. There's

than lights flickering, and some of the cell signal and communications are starting to become a problem as well. And that is all the more concerning with this storm, because it's not just about the storm surge, it's not just about the wind, it's not just about the inland rain. We're also contending with the possibility of overnight tornadoes. And so many of us are familiar with getting those alerts on our phones. In a hurricane, cell signal often can go out. Imagine having to go through a storm like this and bracing for the potential of a tornado and not being able to get those phone alerts.

That is a storyline we're going to be watching throughout the night time. And I cannot stress it off, as you said it, we're still waiting for things to get worse. We are on the right side, what is known as the dirty side of the storm. That means we're going to get the worst of it as it makes its way on shore any minute now. And just one other thing to note about how this storm is so strong still as it makes its way onto shore. 24 hours ago, the forecasts were very different. This storm is a major hurricane now, and it is staying very strong. as it gets to us. Very different scenario from what we were bracing for yesterday.

And hopefully people heated the warnings to get out because by the time they realized how bad this was, it might have been too late to get out, Tom. Jesse Kirsch, for us, as we're starting to see some transformers explode there along the Gulf Coast. Bill Carrens is standing by for us. Bill Carrens, I'm looking over your shoulder there at that radar. It looks like Jesse and his team and all those residents in Destin are right in the bull's eye of what is now a category two storm, downgraded. Yeah, only five miles per hour, so it's really just for the history books. 115 category three and 110. The damage is very similar, but for the history books, this will not be a major hurricane at landfall.

We did watch a gust recently of 76 miles per hour in distance. That was the first hurricane gust. We've been sitting at 61. I think the gauge has stopped working at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, but Pensacola had really high winds over the last two hours. A lot of power is starting to go out throughout this region. Notice the storm is now only about 30 miles off the coast. We're expecting landfall within the next hour or so.

There's not much of a backside to this storm. We are still watching the chance of tornadoes. We haven't had any reported yet. We don't have any active tornado warnings, which is great. But this will be a problem that will plague us in the next 24 hours, right through even the day tomorrow. So the whole eye and what's left of the backside of it, still 30 miles out into the Gulf.

So we still have a ways to go to get all of this mess through Florida and to really start weakening the storm. We are under an extreme wind warning. This is issued only when we have tropical systems making landfall with the eye, especially of major hurricanes, are very strong hurricanes. So everyone from Pensacola to Fort Walton Beach to Destin, heading back over towards Freeport here

and even Panama City Beach areas. They're telling everyone, stay away from windows. This is almost the equivalent of a tornado coming through until this eye wall clears in roughly about three hours from now. We're going to continue to watch the storm surge. One interesting thing that's happened in the last hour or two. We continued, the storm should have been going more due north. This black line shows you where it has pat,

where it was over the day today. But notice that little hook still to the right. The storm is now going to go right over the top of Jesse and our crew here in Destin, instead of it to the left of them. The difference with that is now the worst storm surge should be just to the right, not where Jesse is located. So that's why I'm watching here. This Panama City Beach forecast, this is a live picture of what's happening at the water.

So this tells us what the storm surge is. So in other words, if there wasn't a storm, ECEs says the water would be 3.7 feet lower than it is right now. and we're approaching high tide at 10.30 this evening. So this is almost already a four-foot surge, and we haven't even gotten that landfall yet. So this is going to go up. We'll watch this. So this area from Destin to Panama City Beach,

if we're going to get any really damaging storm surge, that's where it's going to be taking place. In Mobile, it's the opposite. They're negative two and a half feet because the water's blowing out and heading out into the Gulf. So we're going to take this and move it into areas of Alabama by about 1 a.m. And so the wind problems are going to continue well into tomorrow, Tom.

Even by tomorrow afternoon, evening, our friends from Atlanta into the Appalachians, especially at high elevations, we could easily see Gus in the 40, 50, 60 mile per hour range. And Bill, real quick, people should stay indoors throughout the night if they are in the storm zone, correct? Oh, yeah. Trees could fall 50 mile per hour gust. Anyone that, you know, central Alabama down to the Gulf Coast, just wait till morning. Bill Karens for us, Bill, we thank you for that. That's going to conclude this NBC News special report. We're going to have much more ahead on our streaming network, NBC News Now, online at NBCNews.com, out the night and there will be much more tomorrow on today. We thank you so much for watching. I'm Tom Yamis in New York.

All right, we thank you for rejoining our coverage here on Top Story and NBC News. Now, Bill Cairns, you were just talking about this hurricane and a few of the things that had surprised you as well. We also just got a bit of breaking news. It's downgraded now to a category two, but still a massive hurricane and affecting so many communities there along the Panhandle. Yeah, and all along, remember yesterday we were saying it was going to get to a category two, and we were hoping at landfall would go down to a category one. But it intensified more than was expected over the extremely warm water in the central portion of the Gulf,

and the water was very warm with depth. And that overcame the vertical shear, the stuff that's supposed to tear the storm apart. Well, that vertical wind shear really didn't start to kick into over the last couple hours to weaken the storm. It was really too late. So that's why we're going from a three to a two instead of a two to a one. And that does make a big difference with the amount of damage

that we're going to see, especially tree damage, even well inland with the strong winds. So this is that northern eye coming on shore. This is our extreme wind warning. It extends until 8.45 p.m. Central time. So we still got a ways to go. So it's roughly at least another about almost two hours here of the potential for high, dangerous winds

where we're seeing that landfall. One of the stories to watch will be the storm surge. Storm surge typically does the most damage and it typically takes the most lives. The saying that people will say down on the coastal areas is you run from the water, you hide from the wind. And that's kind of, so that's why they evacuate the coastal areas. because when you get water levels that are jumping up, you have nowhere else to go.

But that's why from the further inland, oftentimes you can just stay safe in interior rooms. So this is our storm surge map. This is a live map showing you where the water heights should be compared to what they really are. So in Mobile, it's almost two to three feet lower than it should be. But in areas like Panama City, Tom, that's where we're watching, possibly the worst storm surge. Yeah, and things are just starting to pick up right now. Bill, we thank you for all that. We thank you for watching the special edition of Top Story tonight.

I'm Tom Yamis, broadcasting, as always, from New York. Stay right there. Our live coverage of Hurricane Isai as continues right now.