New Jersey's Army National Guard is sending support for response operations in Florida ahead of hurricane Milton's landfall the governor's office today announced 80 soldiers and 30 military vehicles have been deployed to Camp Landing the Convoy is expected to arrive by the end of the week and will coordinate with Florida's division of Emergency Management and the state's national guard the powerful storm is barreling toward Florida's West Coast currently rated a category 4 hurricane which means it bring sustained winds between 130 and 156 mph leaving catastrophic damage in its wake forecasters expect Milton to make landfall overnight during the early morning hours sometime around 2 a.m. and it has the potential to be one of the most damaging and costly hurricanes in US history for more I'm joined by Rick Davis he's a senior meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Tampa Bay that's directly in the storm's path Rick Davis thanks so much for joining me um of course there's a lot of talk about when and where this storm will make landfall but I'm curious how much you're already seeing in terms of the outer bands and how much landfall even matters when it comes to a storm of this magnitude uh so you brought up some really good points uh right now we have tremendous amount of uh rain and we have tornadoes moving through our Southern areas uh We've there's been several large tornadoes that have been spotted on the ground um just uh east of Fort Meyers Florida so uh we're watching um the early impacts already from the hurricane that's not going to make landfall still for another 14 hours so um it right now is the time what we told people that it it's too late to evacuate now is the time to just shelter in place and um ride the storm out it's going to be a scary night for a lot of people and as you mentioned the Storm Center is is going to be quite large so it's going to be a a pretty devastating uh hurricane for us major hurricane at landfall and uh storm surge is going to be tremendous near the center and south of the center but the effects are going to be felt far and wide across the area well well in the Tampa Bay Area itself is vulnerable for this type of storm what type of storm surge might we see and how much rainfall is predicted did so yeah the storm surge uh in Tampa Bay right now as you mentioned Tampa Bay is very vulnerable and it's the way the the bay is shaped it's the way the Gulf of Mexico is you know meets the bay and our barrier islands that are faced kind of Southwest so any any wind from a south or Southwest Direction really piles water and funnels it into the bay and then because the wind is going to last for so long it funnels it for you know 12 hours so it just piles up and up and up so um that's why we are if if the storm goes south of Tampa Bay then we could actually have what's called a negative storm surge where the wind gets the the wind is from the east or Northeast and that can actually pull water out of the bay and then you have a negative surge but one thing if if we get strong East Winds it will take the the water that's in the bay and take it from the East side and push it into the west side of the bay which is St Petersburg which is a very highly populated area so we could still see um some you know 8 to 10 feet or even higher surge in Tampa Bay so we're not out of the woods in Tampa Bay at the storm surge uh winds we expect 125 sustained gusting 155 miles an hour this area is not seen 155 mph winds in over a 100 years so whether you're in Tampa Bay whether you're in Sarasota whether you're in Fort Meyers these uh this storm will create widespread wind uh damage uh trees power lines down roofs ripped off of houses um and this is right on the heels of of hurricane Helen yeah I mean Rick you mentioned that we haven't seen anything like this in a hundred years Noah did predict an above average hurricane season but this sort of double disaster I'm calling it Helen and now Milton I mean how does that compare with past hurricanes in terms of what you've seen in your career so a lot of residents thought oh well I've gone through Ian and Irma which were major hurricanes but I want I want to tell them well you've been brushed by a major hurricane you have not had a direct hit by a major hurricane so U leading up to this there were people we would get calls from the public about oh this isn't too serious or I I wrote out Ian and Irma I'm going to be fine and we wanted to tell you know we told people no no we've never seen this in in our lifetimes we've not seen this type of damage this type of storm into the Tampa Bay area so even if moves South we are going to have widespread um wind damage uh problems and then and even uh what we didn't haven't talked about yet is a rainfall flooding so we're expecting some areas of 18 plus inches of rain Rick Davis joining us from Tampa Bay Rick thanks so much and please stay safe yeah thank you very much [Music]