Good evening once again. I'm Stephanie Rule and we are closely tracking

deadly Hurricane Milton as it hammers the state of Florida. The storm made

landfall just hours ago as in an extremely dangerous category 3 near

Siesta Key. Within the last hour it was downgraded to a category 2 but federal and

state officials urge residents to shelter in place as the storm continues

to unleash dangerous conditions. At least two people have been confirmed dead as a

result of the hurricane. I want to bring in NBC news meteorologist, my friend Bill Carrens with the latest on the storm

Bill what do we know? Well we went through a tornado outbreak during the day today

and we know that it's likely taken a couple of lives then we had the landfall itself with now what is

possibly historic storm surge that is taking place at this hour Sarasota

southwards down the Naples. We know that there's water in almost all of the

downtown areas as we speak.

And Naples, it just crested, and it's starting to receive, but it's going to take a while

because high tide's still on its way in.

And we've had an epic amount of rain.

Yes, Tampa missed out on the storm surge.

That's great.

But they have had an incredible rain event

and we know that there's water issues.

They're under a flash flood emergency

from clear water to Tampa to St. Petersburg and

St. Petersburg picked up 16 inches of rain already with this storm and in one hour

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