Welcome to Meet the Press. Now I'm Chuck Todd reporting from Washington, but of course

we are all tracking Hurricane Adalia as it makes its way across Georgia and South Carolina

after slamming into the big band of Florida this morning. Adalia made landfall with sustained

winds north of 120 miles an hour. This is footage from Keaton Beach as the then category

three storm came on shore. This is the strongest hurricane to hit Florida's big band right

where the panhandle meets the peninsula. Strongest hurricane to hit that big band in 127

years. These wild images at a parry floor to show you the extent of the wind damage alone

as it basically destroys a local gas station and sends debris flying. The storm surge has

been as was feared catastrophic in certain areas, slightly south in Cedar Key. It carried

away an entire building on the property of a local inn. And here are the images south

of where the storm hit out of Tampa which avoided a direct hit, but still faced widespread

flooding. It was on the dirty side of the storm. So they had the storm surge and it swallowed

entire roads and other areas. So the damage is extensive and is still being assessed.

The damage of some of the aftermath in Keaton Beach and drone footage of Crystal River

shot by our NBC News team that you're watching here. Two deaths have been attributed to

the storm so far according to local officials in an NBC News count. Search and rescue efforts

are underway in Tarpon Springs and Hernando County. And the National Guard has already

arrived in the hard hit town of Keaton Beach to aid efforts there. The governor of Florida

Ron DeSantis was on the ground in Perry last hour and praised the National Guard's readiness.

We have many hundreds of National Guard just right here in Taylor County. This is kind of

the ground zero deployment for them. And if there's more that's needed, we'll be able

to surge more accordingly. We've activated 5,500 members of the Florida National Guard.

...