Hurricane Ian’s top sustained winds increased in a matter of hours from 120 mph to 155 mph (250 kph), making it a high-end Category 4 hurricane Wednesday morning.
“This is going to be a nasty, nasty day,” Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) told a news conference early Wednesday as the massive storm caused widespread power outages. Over 2 million residents have been under evacuation orders for a couple of days, however, DeSantis told residents this morning it is no longer safe to evacuate.
Hhurricane Ian is nearing southwest Florida as one of its most intense hurricanes on record, expected to produce catastrophic storm surge, destructive winds, and flooding rainfall.
Landfall of Ian’s center should occur this afternoon between the Sarasota, Port Charlotte, and Fort Myers areas. Ian should remain a Category 4 storm, but it is possible the storm could make an extremely rare Category 5 landfall this afternoon.
Regardless, Ian will be a life-threatening, catastrophic hurricane, one of the strongest on record to hit southwest Florida.
The National Hurricane Center is now projecting a storm surge of 12 to 16 feet will strike the coast from Englewood to Bonita Beach. The NHC also projects that 12 to 18 inches of rain could fall in a swath along Interstate 4.
Once the hurricane comes ashore, Ian will move over the central Florida Peninsula and weaken to a tropical storm. Ian could then emerge briefly over the Atlantic waters late Thursday, before turning back toward the Georgia or South Carolina coasts and making a second landfall as a tropical storm late this week.
Ocean flooding in the Fort Myers region
Storm surge forecasts have been revised with Hurricane Ian. The National Hurricane Center is now predicting as much as 12 to 18 feet of flooding for a zone of the coastline from Port Charlotte to Naples, including the Fort Myers and Cape Coral regions.
The inundation of those areas could be “catastrophic,” the hurricane center said, advising that “Residents in these areas should urgently follow any evacuation orders in effect.”
Storm surge is a product of the sheer amount of moisture a storm like Ian carries, the force of its winds pushing ocean water inland, and extremely low air pressure at the center of the storm literally allowing a bulge of high water beneath it. It can move like a wall knocking down whatever is in its path.
