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Storm chaser Connor McCrorey reported live from Siesta Key, Florida, where nearly 24 hours after Milton's landfall, buildings that burned to the ground amid flooding were still smoking

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00:00Our coverage of Milton continues now with storm chaser Connor McCrory. He is
00:04live in Siesta Key and Connor well you found yourself here at the point of
00:08landfall. This was a fierce storm and a unique one because I know that things
00:13really escalated on the backside of the storm for many people. So what was your
00:17experience like with this one? I know we checked in with you throughout the
00:19course of the evening last night but what will you remember the most from
00:22this one? The front side came through and honestly it we got the sense that maybe
00:28the storm wasn't as strong as it had been anticipated to be. But then after
00:32we went through that calm eye and the backside came through it roared to life.
00:36We definitely I mean it's hard to visually estimate those winds sometimes
00:40but I'd say in downtown Sarasota we had gusts over 110 miles per hour at times
00:44and that's also when the surge really began to come up and move in. So the
00:49backside you never know if it's gonna be the front half of the backside that gets
00:52you with these hurricanes and this time it was definitely the back half. And Connor
00:56I see behind you it appears that there's a house that must have burnt
01:00down. Do you know of what what led to that? I have to assume that there was
01:05some flooding or some kind of damage tied to the storm that that led to some
01:08problems there. I've been told that it was during the flooding last night
01:13around midnight that this this condo building caught fire. If you look all the
01:18way back there apparently the fire originated in the clubhouse and then the
01:22winds swept it down this way and three more units caught fire and burned
01:27completely to the ground. You can actually see the smoke it's still
01:31smoldering here about 18 hours later. Different forms of damage here whether
01:37it be a structure fire caused by the storm, storm surge flooding, serious wind
01:41as well. Connor McCrory, storm chaser there at the point of landfall in
01:45Siesta Key, Florida. Connor we appreciate your reporting. Thanks again.
01:49And we take a look at, thanks Connor, by the numbers here again that was the
01:54point of landfall Siesta Key, Florida. He was right there and we had gusts of wind
01:59over a hundred miles per hour in a few spots. Now the storm surge there are
02:02different things that in the weather world are kind of tricky to document
02:07well. There will be crews that go out with NOAA and local National Weather
02:11Service offices especially the Tampa Bay office that's headquartered in Ruskin
02:16and they're going to do a pretty thorough investigation of what the storm
02:18surge actually was. The problem with some of the statistics sometimes is that the
02:23sensors that measure storm surge are very widely separated and sometimes you
02:28have 70, 80 miles of coastline or 40 or 50 miles without a true sensor to
02:33measure things and we learn after the fact that while the greatest gauge height
02:37estimate was 5.78 feet we often see that there are localized areas to see quite a
02:42bit more storm surge than that. So after talking to John Porter we really do
02:47expect that there will be areas somebody out there maybe near downtown
02:50Sarasota that saw a greater than 10-foot storm surge with this one.

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