zone, particularly in the southwest florida counties, your time to evacuate is coming to an end. you need to evacuate now. a life threatening category 4 storm headed right towards florida. i m john berman live in tampa this morning. brianna keilar is in washington and that is the news from overnight. hurricane ian strength jentd to a category 4 storm with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. wind gusts of 165 miles per hour. the storm forecast has adjusted somewhat south of where i am in tampa headed right towards the fort myers area in florida about 100 miles south of here, but the threat to florida is enormous. more than 2 1/2 million people under some sort of evacuation order. yes, the wind speed is a serious threat now, a category 4 storm. storm surge where i am in tampa, they could see storm surge of 6 feet which would put the water pretty much right where i m stand going it hit the maximum levels down towards where the storm is expected to make landfall. they could
expected to make a direct impact, it could get a 12 foot storm surge. the net effectiveness, it could be devastating and could cause widespread power outages. for that i m now joined by brian reuter who is with florida light and power. thank you so much, sir. i keep hearing dave, i m sorry. i keep hearing widespread power outages. what does that mean? good morning, john. yes, thank you. you know, there certainly is the potential with a storm of this magnitude for us to experience widespread power outages in this territory even as the feeder bands have impacted the territory over the last 24 hours. we ve seen that. we ve managed to restore 120,000 customers already in between the storm bands. at the present time we have 50,000 customers up. so 50,000 customers out. 120,000 who were out but are now
how do you get ready for something like that? what could the impact of a storm surge like that be? nobody in charlotte county now or before has ever seen the kind of storm that ian is with the 12-foot surge, 145 plus-mile-an-hour winds, up to 20 inches of rain and possible tornadoes. we had charlie in 2004. called it a 10-mile wide tornado. no surge, very little rain and it still caused $20 billion worth of damage. brian gleeson in port charlotte, please stay safe. i hope people do get that message from you. stay inside. stay safe. do not be a tourist in a hurricane where you are. brian, thank you very much. so the news just in from the national hurricane center, they have had a plane flying in and out of this storm measuring sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. that s just 2 miles per hour
closed its airport. orlando, meantime, officials say it will stop commercial operations after about 10:30 eastern. one thing they re not expecting a major impact to is the price of oil and gas. that s simply because florida, john, is not a major producer or refiner of oil and gas. the impacts of this could be quite significant. still too early to know but certainly a lot of questions moving ahead, john. yeah. won t be good. rahel solomon, thank you for that. i want to go to brian gleeson, official in port charlotte, florida. could very well be in the direct zone where this now very powerful storm will make impact. hurricane ian now with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. brian, if you can hear me, give me a sense of how ready you are there. we re ready and waiting. we are expecting the early tropical storm force winds to be here a few hours ago.