Hurricane Gordon Weakens on Approach to Florida
BRIAN NELSON, CNN ANCHOR: We begin with Hurricane Gordon. Mandatory evacuations have been ordered for some Gulf Coast regions of Florida now. Those are regions expected to be hit by the brunt of the category one hurricane. The eye of the storm is swirling now about 75 miles off the coast, headed towards Cedar Key, where it's expected to make landfall within the next few hours. This storm is packing winds of 75 mile-an-hour, and it's already causing flooding in several cities, and officials say it could get worse.</s>ANDRIA HALL, CNN ANCHOR: Road blocks are going up to keep motorists out of some low-lying areas. More than 200 people have already filed into temporary shelters. CNN's John Zarrella is standing by live in Crystal River, Florida, with an update for us now. John, what's it like there?</s>JOHN ZARRELLA, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Well, Andria, we are in one of those mandatory evacuation areas, and actually for about the past two hours there has been very little rain, very little wind. A little bit of a squall line kicking up now, you can see the boats here in Crystal River. There is a favorite area where you can go out and watch the manatees swim. The boats are all secured, they're tied down. One of the interesting features here is just how low the tide is. Now we've been talking about tremendous storm surge throughout the day today, perhaps six, eight, maybe even 10 feet of storm surge expected in this area. But with the direction of the wind as it is right now, the water's actually been pulled out of the bay that leads out to the Gulf of Mexico. So they're still very concerned here, the folks. As a matter of fact, about a dozen people gathered here earlier. They were watching the Tampa Bay Bucs and the Detroit Lions football game. You can see them there, they're still huddled around. They've been watching television all day and paying close attention to the reports of -- from the local television station, and their concern is still for storm surge. That's the big worry. It floods terribly here. During that no-name storm of 1993, which was a winter storm in March that came in, where I'm standing right now was literally underwater. And so this is one of the lowest lying areas in Florida, and they believe that between 6:00 and 8:00 tonight, there still could be some serious storm surge flooding problems . They're seeing the storm surge gradually progress up the coast. A little further south earlier today, in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area, there's been some damage from storm surge along the coast. Now up a little further into Duneden (ph), that storm surge moving in. That appears to be what the biggest threat will be. Again, you can see it's not blowing at all here, hardly any rain at all in this particular area right now and even periodically the sun trying to break out from the clouds. So hopefully for the folks here, the worst will be what storm surge they do get, and hopefully that won't be much, as Gordon moves ever closer, expecting to come very close to us. We're not that far from Cedar Key, which is supposed to be a spot where it could very well make landfall within the next three, four, five hours. So again, serious concern for water damage here, but it appears from wind and rain, at least, we may be out of the woods. This is John Zarrella reporting live from Crystal River, Florida.</s>NELSON: All right, thank you, John. And let's check in with the forecasters in our weather center who've been tracking Hurricane Gordon all day. And here is Jaqui Jeras with the latest.</s>JACQUI JERAS, CNN METEOROLOGIST: Well, Brian. the conditions of Hurricane Gordon have stayed relatively the same through the late morning and early afternoon hours, at least in terms of the speed that it's moving and the amount of wind gust that its been producing. Around 75-mile-per-hour gusts, we're seeing some beyond that. Here's the current position of Hurricane Gordon. It's 28.1 north, and 83.7 west. It's 90 miles south-southwest of Cedar Key Florida, and it's about 75 miles, about due west, of Tampa. It's pushing up to the north and to the east about 16 miles per hour, and that motion has been relatively steady. Again, those winds sustained at 75 miles per hour. Now we're looking at it just within the next couple of hours that we're expecting the eye of the hurricane to make landfall. Of course, the outer bands are already well on shore, producing some heavy rains, some strong, gusty winds, reports around 5 inches of rain. And we're mostly concerned about northern Florida, where we're going to see the heavy rainfall, and of course right here in the big bend and along the coastline is going to be where we're concerned about the storm surge and quite a bit of flooding because of that, pushing up into the northeast and will likely be downgraded as it hits shore. Because of tat resistance, it begins to slow down just a little bit -- Brian.</s>NELSON: All right, thanks, Jacqui. Don't go away. As the storm moves up the Florida coastline, all eyes that are not on the storm itself are on the National Hurricane Center in Miami. And the director of the center, Max Mayfield, joins us now live. Mr. Mayfield, what can you tell us about Hurricane Gordon? When is it expected to make landfall, and how bad do you think it will be?</s>MAX MAYFIELD, DIRECTOR, NATIONAL HURRICANE CENTER: Well, the good news is it looks like it is weakening and will likely be downgraded to a tropical storm by the 5:00 p.m. advisory. The center of the storm is about 70 miles or so south-southwest of Cedar Key. In fact, I think you can see behind me the low center here. This is Cedar Key, and still headed towards the northeast or north-northeast, about 14 miles per hour. But you can also see these rain bands well out away from that center there, and that's -- the heavy rain's already spreading out across northern Florida and into southeastern Georgia. We also have a threat of some isolated tornadoes on these outer rain bands, well away from the center of the storm.</s>JERAS: Now, Mr. Mayfield, you mentioned how widespread the rainfall has been. But how widespread do you expect the flooding to be?</s>MAYFIELD: I really don't think it's going to be that big a problem with the rainfall, In fact, some of the rainfall will likely be welcomed up there. The fact that it's moving relatively quickly toward the northeast I think will, you know, move the rain out before it gets really bad. That's not to say that you can't have some flooding and certainly some urban flooding on the roads and all, but I think our biggest concern is really going to be from the storm surge near and just to the south and where the center crosses the coast and also from these isolated tornadoes.</s>JERAS: Now there's a high pressure system, which has shot the East Coast. Do you expect that there's a potential for that to stall this system out at all?</s>MAYFIELD: I really don't think it's going to do that. What we are concerned with is that pressure gradient, with the large high to the north and the storm coming in from the south. Right now, we have -- if you can look behind me here -- we have the tropical storm warning for the East Coast from Titusville up to the South Carolina-North Carolina border. And then we have a tropical storm watch out from there up to Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. So if this system continues to skirt along the southeast coast near the water there, I think there's still a very good chance we could have some tropical storm-force winds all the way up to the mid-Atlantic coast.</s>NELSON: Mr. Mayfield, is there any danger it could pick up steam and become a hurricane again once it crosses land?</s>MAYFIELD: I think there's always some possibility if it gets out of the water enough, but if it does that I think most of the strong winds will be on the east side, away from land, so I really don't envision us getting hurricane-force winds, you know, anywhere on the Atlantic coast right now.</s>NELSON: OK, thank you for joining us with that update and the good news about the storm weakening.</s>MAYFIELD: You're very welcome.</s>NELSON: The director of the National Hurricane Center, Max Mayfield.