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power outage
Hurricane Idalia made landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast and left hundreds of thousands of residents in the battered region without power.
A local reporter covering storm conditions in Chiefland, Florida, on Wednesday around 6:30 a.m. happened to be on camera—live—when the power went out.
A video of him covering Idalia, which had strengthened into a Category 4 storm, and experiencing the power outage went viral.
In the clip, Florida State Capitol Reporter Forrest Saunders was wearing a navy hooded slicker and telling viewers about the potential devastation to the island community caused by the 12- to 16-foot storm surge.
Saunders said:
"About a hundred people from about a 700-person community decided to stay behind and wait this storm out."
As he was about to continue, everything suddenly plunged into darkness, prompting him to react with:
"You just saw the power go off; if you can't see me, I apologize."
You can see a clip of the live power outage, here.
The camera panned out and viewers could barely make out the waterlogged journalist's silhouette illuminated by the headlights of a lone vehicle braving the elements.
"That just happened. In fact, I'm seeing some alerts go off in other parts of town here," said Saunders.
"Looks like we still have traffic lights but we definitely lost power in this block of Chiefland."
"And that again is because the wind is so intense."
"We're gonna be safe as we can here," he said, and sent the reporting back to the studio.
Saunders, who usually covers Florida politics, lawmakers, and state governments, later took to the platform X (formerly Twitter) and quipped:
"I prefer a political tempest."
According to the ET advisory from the National Hurricane Center as of early Thursday morning, the heavy rainfall and coastal storm surge was expected to impact South Carolina.
Forecasters warned that the situation was possibly "life-threatening."