History will be made when Hurricane Michael makes landfall along the Florida Panhandle and northeastern Gulf Coast today.
In recorded history, there has never been a Category 4 hurricane that has made landfall in the area of the state. Today, Hurricane Michael is threatening a wide swath of Florida’s Gulf Coast with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center, and a life-threatening storm surge predicted to be as high as 14 feet in some places. The Panhandle area from Pensacola near the Alabama border to Panama City and Tallahassee inland from there are expected to be hit hardest, with rain bands extending north and east into Alabama and Georgia and south east down the Gulf Coast side of the peninsula as far as the Tampa Bay area. Today on AirTalk, Larry Mantle checks in.
Guests:
Lewis Turner, reporter and meteorologist for First Coast News WTLV/WJXX in Jacksonville, Florida (local ABC & NBC affiliate) who is in Tallahassee covering Hurricane Michael; he tweets
Annie Blanks, reporter for the Northwest Florida Daily News, a newspaper owned by Gatehouse Media, a newspaper organization with 13 daily newspapers in the state; she is in Destin on Florida’s Gulf Coast covering Hurricane Michael; she tweets