Hurricane Sally is closing in on the Gulf coast with rapidly strengthening winds. Tuesday's 5 am forecast has the storm hitting the border between Mississippi and Alabama early Wednesday mornning. The system is expected to reduce to a slow moving tropical storm by tomorrow afternoon. The Alabama Gulf coast is expected to be drenched by two feet of rain and winds of up to ninety miles per hour. Sally could also result in severe flooding. In the last hours before the Alabama beaches closed under Governor Kay Ivey's order, people in Orange Beach were taking pictures of the big waves and getting in their last beach walks. APR Gulf coast correspondent talked with one family and they filled sand bags.
"It's not that we think it is going to hit us, but we think that if we prepare it won't. We are doing this for everybody. If we prepare, which we never do, then it won't hit us,” says lawyer Harold Calloway.
He’s hoping he doesn't have to return to court today.
“We have made a few and are going to prop them up against our back door. It is just something to do. I have lived here for 25 years. The worst one I have stayed for is George. I lived in Mobile during Frederick and we got lucky, our little beach house survived,” says Calloway.
“We were out of school for a couple of weeks. We get skipped a lot by the weather, which is a good thing. We are making four bags and the city gave us ten. We checked my daughter out of school. It's exciting. We have a five-year-old now. We can't put her in the canoe and ride it out. We even pulled in the patio furniture and never do that. This guarantees zero impact,” he says.
Hurricane Sally is crawling toward the northern Gulf Coast at just 2 mph, a pace that's enabling the storm to gather huge amounts of water to eventually dump on land.