00:00Bill, how are people there getting ready for this high-impact storm?
00:05Hey, Jeff. Yeah, you can see people just getting out of work. They're coming straight here to
00:09sandbag stations like this one, where they need to bring their own sandbags and shovels. But
00:13people here we've been talking with telling us they are taking this storm seriously. They were
00:18hoping they were going to luck out and possibly see two years in a row without a U.S. hurricane
00:24landfall, but they knew that the odds were against them. Check out this video that's just coming
00:28into AccuWeather, and you could see some of the long lines of cars showing up at gas stations
00:34this afternoon. Drivers filling up their gas tanks and also emergency canisters to power
00:40their generators. Pensacola, Florida could see 8 to 12 inches of rain or more from the storm.
00:46Sandbags can help with the freshwater flooding, but they're likely no match closer to the coast,
00:51where we could see 6 to 10 feet or more of storm surge. Zach Burke tells us Hurricane
00:58Sally was the last storm to cause major damage here in Pensacola back in 2020, including
01:03a local bridge that was knocked out of commission. Barges broke loose. It turned
01:08Gulf Breeze into a cul-de-sac. So my normal drive for 15 minutes going to downtown
01:12Pensacola turned into two and a half hours because the bridge to get us across
01:16closed. So it shut down a lot of small businesses. We're hoping that does not
01:19happen again. Yeah, Sally was a Category 2 hurricane when it made landfall near Gulf Shores, Alabama.
01:27Two people in the Pensacola area died in the water, and a third fatality was linked to carbon
01:34monoxide poisoning from a generator use, Jeff. So people here, they're trying to be optimistic,
01:40but they know that they need to take this storm seriously. And of course, a lot of people here
01:44along the Gulf Coast, all too familiar knowing that I-named storms can cause a lot of problems.
01:51We have a long history of that, seeing the I-named storms causing huge issues in recent decades.
01:57That's very true, Bill. And as you well know, the I is the most frequently retired storm-named
02:04first letter. And well, the most recent version of Isaias back in that same year of 2020
02:09was very close to probably one of the most impactful and deadliest storms that has not
02:14had its name retired, at least since 1953 or so, when names were given human names as opposed
02:23to letter names or numerical names, as we did in the past.
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