Live from Tampa: Tropical Storm Debby's Impacts Begin to Lash Florida

well if you needed extra incentive to just stay inside today look at me uh I hope you got all your preparations done in Tampa up and down the West Coast of Florida before it started raining yesterday actually not a terrible day here but this is kind of what we're going to be dealing with today you see the heavy rain coming down this is kind of the beginning of another one of those heavier rain bands that's going to move through and bring us those Gusty winds the last rain band that we had moved through about an hour ago uh St Pete is just just across the bay from us and they actually reported a 54 uh mph wind gust there in St Pete so we're seeing those winds gusting up the tropical storm Forest obviously the heavy rain is coming down that's going to create some flooding issues the forecast here in Tampa around this region 6 to 12 in in locally higher amounts and you can see why here I mean just look at this when you've got this rain coming down at at this type of um at this type of rate that is going to cause some flooding for sure so we have the concern for rainfall flooding but I also want to talk to you about our possibility for storm surge flooding so you can see um the Tampa Bay right behind me here and I want you to take a look at that that wall Rodney I think we can see kind of that seaw wall that we have going on right there now the forecast is for up to around 4 feet of storm surch here possible and if we get that if that verifies that it will obviously be right at the top of that seaw wall so that's going to cause some flooding for this area popular restaurant here in Tampa Bay you know no stranger to the water getting high that the general manager did tell us that you know during a king tide the water can come all the way up this beach so we we do see some flooding here but what you don't want to start to see are maybe these um these Tiki Huts getting damaged or things like that those flood prone places that you know flood pretty easily we're going to start to see that with this rain with the possibility of river flooding and then of course as we approach high tide with that onshore flow guys we are going to have hours of onshore flow in fact if you um look at the storm surge watch this issued for Tampa Bay the concern is through early Tuesday because the concern lasts as long as that onshore flow is going to last so uh we're going to take the storm surge risk the rain risk I mean look at it guys you can you can see just how hard it is raining here um all of that's going to come together to create some flooding issues just stay in you don't want to be out and about in this and of course as we get into the nighttime hours it's going to get worse and that's when it becomes more dangerous that's when you might not be able to tell how badly flooded the road is so people just need to stay in uh we're already starting to see some of this water ponding from this rainfall that we're seeing here and we are going to see more of that so um just be vigilant be safe and stick with the weather channel for the latest because guys as you can see like I said at the beginning of my shot if there you were wondering whether you should go out and do anything today look at me I should be your incentive to just stay inside uh and not have to deal with this