Let's go to Chad Myers in the CNN Weather Center, Chad.

Yeah, what's happening?

Well, the center has now obviously moved completely onshore.

You are on the dirty side now of what is the I this should be the dirty side.

This is where most of the convection should be right where Carlos is, but all we have now is just onshore wind.

The heavy rain is up here because there's a cold front that's going to be at least a frontal system that's going to be interacting with the northern part of this eye.

That's why we're getting so much rainfall.

Weather service just put out somewhere around 16 inches of rain has already fallen in Saint Pete and 8 inches in just two hours.

Anderson, you are right here.

You can see the town of Palmetto.

You are right next to it right here.

You're about to get better because all of this heaviest rain and the wind with it is going to move off to your east.

You can begin to kind of see where the center is.

Still here.

Well now onshore.

Zooming out all of the tornadoes we had earlier along I-95 and 101 offshore.

All gone now.

That's good, but the winds are still with you.

You just had a wind gust of 102 and the latest gusts Saint Pete 84 mph.

Anderson.

Can you just repeat that?

Did you say 16 inches of rain?

Yes, since the storm started 16 inches of rain and in the past two hours, 8 inches of rain has fallen.

Now that's 8 plus 8 is 16, not on top of the 16, but just in two hours alone, 5 inches one hour and three inches.

The next unbelievable.

That's incredible and I mean, is it too early to know about storm surge?

The storm surge is going to be South of Siesta Key, and that's not where you are.

You are up to the North of Siesta Key.

So now we're Randy is and all the way down to our Naples and Venice and Nokomis that's where the surge is happening right now.

We don't have any pictures there because we didn't send anyone there because we don't want them to be in 15 feet of water, so that's why we don't have images yet, but I'm assuming that that water is going over the barrier islands and into the Bay behind it.

This all the rainfalls to the North.

This is all freshwater flooding.

We're down to the South where that wind is coming onshore.

That's all saltwater flooding and it's still coming up, so don't go outside and hope that this is the end of it.

If you're in Venice or Nokomis, or even into Naples, we will still see more wind coming onshore because you're not going to change direction, or at least Anderson, you are going to change the wind direction coming out of the North and then eventually it'll take awhile.

But even though we have a negative surge in Tampa Bay down almost 3 feet, where those were the cruise ships dock, it's 3 feet below where it should be, not up above where it should be, but then eventually the wind will come around and kind of fill that Tampa Bay back up again.

So as the administrator said, don't go out there just because the Bay is dry.

It won't be dry for long.

Yeah, hey Chad, that's really helpful.

I appreciate it and that amount of rainfall is incredible.

I you mentioned Venice.

I want to go to Jonathan Petromala who is in Venice.

Jonathan, I understand you're seeing flooding.

Hey Anderson, yeah it's the meteorologist was just saying we're South of where the eye made landfall and hopefully people didn't let their guard down on the front side of the storm they didn't see the water maybe out their windows or out the back doors because the backside is really when things start to to push in, especially in that Southeast quadrant of the eye.

And so unfortunately here in Venice we are seeing that push in.

We had a shot just a little bit ago.

You saw it on the air facing one of these lower lying neighborhoods here in Venice just to the north of downtown.

And you saw the water was about over the hood of a car that was parked in distance.

Unfortunately, because the wind is just blowing straight across, it's really dangerous, dangerous for us to point directly towards that shot.

So we had to move.

That's why we're kind of in a safer place.

One more protected place to try and protect our glass from from the debris that's coming in as well because the backside of the storm, the winds are really directly on shore, which is also helping to push that all that water in.

You may have said it.

I had a hard time hearing you.

Do you have a sense of how much water is on the ground?

I mean, like how many inches of rainfall you've gotten.

It's not just the rainfall, though Anderson is really just about the storm surge.

At this point you can imagine that the Gulf of Mexico is like a bathtub and the storm is a person in that bathtub.

And since Milton moved across the bathtub of the Gulf of Mexico, it's pushed the water over the edge.

And so that's what storm surge really is.

And unfortunately that's the West Coast of Florida.

And so all of this wind that's blowing directly on shore, the momentum of the storm has pushed in several feet of storm surge.

You can see probably at least four feet, possibly up to five feet, but it's going to continue to push in as the storm moves on shore and the momentum carries that water in.

So we're definitely going to see at least five feet.

It could get much higher, though, and that's why we're still waiting where we are here in Venice and trying to make sure that we aren't trapped.

We have to always have an exit plan, which we do.

We have high ground just off to the south of where we are, but still a very dangerous situation with with no, even though it's moving on shore away from landfall, away from where we are, the storm surge isn't.

Yeah, yeah, Chad Myers was saying that wind is going to continue in around Venice for a while.

Jonathan, thank you.

Check back in with you.

I'm going to build.

We are in Saint Petersburg built.

Yeah, Anderson, you got to get a load of the wind.

We found a great little hidey hole in this parking garage or on the fourth floor and you get an amazing perspective.

Chad said the gusts here around 7879.

But look at that.

That looks so much more powerful than anything I've seen.

Look at that huge tree limb just blowing through the intersection.

The sign on University Boulevard has come down.

This is First Avenue, the intersection in downtown Saint Petersburg.

And the other thing we've been keeping an eye on and even some of the folks who are sheltering here said, did you notice the crane is blown around?

That's another one of those construction trains.

Oh, you just saw that lightning sort of backlighted there for a second.

This thing has moved almost 180 degrees from where it was pointed when the storm began and the gusts up there must be swinging those things around.

The city of Saint Petersburg put out actually a warning to just be cognizant of the four tower cranes downtown.

One more thing to worry about here.

But the storm.

It's just I can't describe.

I'm just so gobsmacked by the sheer amount of water that is just coming down.

And these violent, violent sheets.

And we have no idea what I'm sure the harbor, which is just around the corner here, is roiling with all of those boats.

I was here for Hurricane Ian and saw just the massive damage done to the marine industry as hell was you got to imagine a lot of sailors, a lot of folks who make their living off the sea.

Fishermen and women are stressed tonight about what is this is going to do to their livelihood, not to mention the power outages that are going on now, but it is really kicked up noticeably and we thought it was bad before.

Let's go over here.

I'll give you a little more perspective in this parking garage.

We're sheltered, but the mist coming in, as you can see, is so strong it's starting to flood these upper levels.

But we heard this violent noise and I was trying to figure out the source of it.

It's these aluminum pillars of this parking structure that they're being rocked and scraped against the ceiling there.

And so you can imagine what this is, how this storm is testing the construction along the Florida coast.

Already, some of this stuff is coming loose.

Carlos, take a look over here to the right.

This is what I'm talking about here.

Pounding and just the sheer force of it, the parking garage across the way.

All those car alarms going off as the winds are disturbing those vehicles, despite their relative shelter here.

It's interesting you notice all these expensive cars parked on the big bridges around Tampa Bay because that's high ground and folks looking to preserve their vehicle from saltwater damage, park them up on the bridge.

Or if they're lucky enough to get into a garage like this, some of the cities opened up all of their parking garages to the public to give them a places to store their cars.

But here's one more look at this intersection of wind and rain supercharged.

Anderson.

Yeah, Bill, Bill, stay with us because I want to bring in Chad Myers just to give kind of an overview of what's happening where I am and where you are.

Chad, you had said that the wind is going to start to kind of die down, I think, here a little bit.

It doesn't seem like it right now, but I'm waiting for that.

No, you're probably still another two hours before you get gusts under 50.

But Bill, have you noticed the wind shift direction?

We've noticed over the hours that you've changed positions.

Your wind should have been out of the east, maybe east, southeast.

And now it should be out of the north.

Have you noticed that?

He may not have heard me.

But that's what happens when you start to get the northern part of the eye and it begins to move around, you get the east winds for a while, but then all of a sudden you're in the same place, but the storm isn't.

So the wind is going to blow from the north.

And so I know Bill really can look at those winds and say that's greater than 90 miles per hour.

And it likely is.

Anderson, you and Bill both live in New York.

Even when the wind's blowing 30 in those wind tunnels of New York City, even though these aren't 90 story buildings, you could certainly funnel that wind to over 100, 110 if you get a 90 mile per hour gust, let's say at the airport.

Yeah.

That's what it feels like, Chad, it's like, yeah, we're in a wind tunnel here and it's got to be that swirl that you talked about, that change in direction that move these towers around.

That's what struck me.