93-3-WMR Audio on Demand presents the Preston and Steve show podcast.

And now, Preston and Steve's news update with Kathy Romano.

Today is Thursday, October 11th. Good morning, Kathy.

Good morning in the news this morning. Hurricane Michael slammed into the Florida panhandle with terrifying winds of 155 miles per hour Wednesday,

slintering homes and submerging neighborhoods before continuing its destructive charge inland across the southeast.

It was the most powerful hurricane to hit the continental U.S. in nearly 50 years.

At least one death was reported by a falling tree.

Submerged by abnormally warm waters from the Gulf of Mexico, the Category 4 storm crashed ashore in the early afternoon near Mexico Beach, a tourist town about midway along the Panhandle, a 200-mile stretch of white sand beach resorts, fishing towns, and military bases.

After it ravaged the panhandle, Michael barreled into South Georgia as a category

three hurricane, the most powerful ever recorded for that part of the neighboring state.

It later weakened to a category one hurricane, and there were reports of spawned that it spawned

possible tornadoes in central Georgia.

As I was watching the footage yesterday, and, you know, they were really, I mean,

they were covering it all over the place, and it looked bad, but I thought to myself, Florence looked so much worse as it was hitting, you know, and they had been touting this one as cataclysmic, and even the reporters were out there, and you could see it was bad, but. They weren't faking like they couldn't get through the wings. Well, people were writing... But you know what I'm saying? Just to my eye, I wasn't there, but what I was seeing seemed less than Florence. But did you see the aftermath of it? Yes. There's like there were a friend of mine, her dad lives down there. She posted pictures that I guess her dad had sent her and the building across the street from him, every single window. Like it was like a six-story building. Every window was blown out. All the cars were destroyed. A roof you could see across the street. It was a two-story house. The roof was ripped off. You could literally see like the couch inside the house. Wow, man. There was a shot of a guy in his, the den of his home, four and a half feet of water.

You know? Complete. Yeah. Yeah. Oh my God. So in North Florida, Michael battered the shoreline with

sideways rain, powerful gusts and crashing waves, swapping streets and docks, flattening trees,

shredding awnings and peeling away shingles. It set off transformer explosions and knocked out power to more than

388,000 homes and businesses. Damage in Panama City was extensive with broken and uprooted trees

and power lines down nearly everywhere. Roofs were peeled off and homes split open by fallen trees.

Twisted street signs lay on the ground. Residents emerged in the early evening to assess the

damage when rainstop, but they said the skies were still overcast and it was still pretty windy.

Governor Rick Scott announced soon after the powerful eye had swept inland that aggressive

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