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Fox Weather correspondent Robert Ray felt the full force of Hurricane Milton Wednesday night shortly before the storm made landfall.
Milton hit Florida as a Category 3 storm near Siesta Key, which is less than 20 miles away from where Ray and his team were positioned in west Bradenton.
“We just had this entire tree snap and fall right on our vehicles,” Ray said on Fox Weather.
The reporter had just finished a live report showing the Manatee River before he walked into his vehicle and looked at his phone.
“And then, all of a sudden, boom!” Ray recalled. “The whole tree just comes down and partially goes into the vehicle where [cameraman] Lloyd is.”
“For sure a hurricane wind gust to take down a tree like that,” he added.
After the tree fell, Ray said there was a “bit of a chaotic moment” when he asked if everyone was alright and he “couldn’t hear a darn thing” because of the roaring winds.
Part of the pine tree was still standing as Ray gave the report, and he admitted he feared the other part would also collapse.
On CNN, anchor Anderson Cooper was hit by debris while reporting live on air from around the same area off the Manatee River.
“It’s coming in from kind of the northeast. And, the water is really now just starting to pour over. If you look at the ground,” Cooper started to say before he was struck.
“Okay, that wasn’t good. Um, we’ll probably go inside shortly,” he added.
It was unclear what exactly hit Cooper, but it appeared to hit his head as he faced toward the ground.
Much of the area has been under a Flash Flood Emergency, with impacts expected through Thursday morning.
