Florence To Hit Coast With Heavy Rain, Storm Surges.
KING: Seeing live pictures there. That's about 23 miles off the coast of North Carolina. You see that flag whipping in the wind. You hear those winds and you see the waves. We continue to track Hurricane Florence as it closes in now on the Carolina Coast. Although officials say the storm is now down to a Category 2, it's still -- they still warn a potentially catastrophic storm surge from winds -- wind and rainfall. For an idea of what to expect from the storm, we're joined now by Brett Adair, he's a field meteorologist who spent years chasing extreme weather as extensive experience covering hurricanes and tropical storms. So Brett, this is where you start to put the projections to the test. I can see the conditions where you are. Last night, you're looking at models, you're looking at predictions. Based on your experience now that you're beginning to feel Florence, what do you expect?</s>BRETT ADAIR, WEATHERNATION FIELD METEOROLOGIST: Well, John, Florence is now about a 115 miles to the east-southeast of our location. We are here in between Surf City and North Topsail Beach toward the Anson County Beach access number two. And it looks like Florence is beginning to slow up just a little bit based on what I'm seeing on radar. And we really expect the same thing even though you see in a slight weakening of the winds, you're seeing those winds expand. It's gotten really gusty here, taking gusts over a tropical storm on the outer banks and we expect that to continue. We've also seeing some storm surge issues as well on Island Drive this afternoon. And we expect that to get worse as we go into the evening.</s>KING: And so Brett, officials are warning it could be up to 13 feet of storm surge in some parts, including about where you are right now. Take us through what that means in the low-lying areas like that.</s>ADAIR: Really what that means, John, is where I'm standing right now will be under water later. We're going to get out of here soon after we do this shot because the weather is definitely going to get worse and that's the problem. The water, the wind, the rain, the inland flooding, they're all huge threats with this system and you really can't run from the water. So if this system continues to move toward the coastline and it slows down even more, on top of that extreme storm surge potential, those flooding rains are going to create big, big problems from the coastline as well inland.</s>KING: And you hear some historical comparisons to 50 years ago. You still have people comparing this to last year in Harvey because of the water. What's your take?</s>ADAIR: Well, we were in Harvey last year in Texas and the storm surge element really wasn't as big of a deal in Harvey as the inland flooding and extreme wind damage that took</s>KING: OK, Brett, appreciate it. Please stay safe. Thanks for joining us here today. Our coverage continues right now with Anderson Cooper and Chris Cuomo.