this update just moments ago. hurricane ian is a storm moving closer to floor at that s west coast bringing high winds, extremely heavy rain and life threatening storm surge flooding. already ian hitting key west with major storm surge flooding. more than 2 1/2 million people now under some level of evacuation warnings. officials escalating their urgent appeals to evacuate. if you are in an evacuation zone, your time to evacuate is coming to an end. you need to evacuate now. meteorologist chad myers is in the cnn weather center. chad, what s the latest on the predicted storm track here? it is still forecast to put all of that water into charlotte harbor, christine. this is and has been kind of looked at as a charrincharlie, s is not charlie. this is florida s katrina. charlie could almost fit inside the eye. the wind speeds of charlie were so significant but only in a small place. this storm has wind, surge, flooding, waves and even rainfall inside of florida of almost
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
seconds ago, really bad surge. that area is really prone to bad surge. the worgs case scenario with the right side coming up into fort myers is going to bring some really bad surge problems today. you ve got water, all this water, storm surge, where is it all going to go? you still have damaging winds to worry about, right? oh, yeah. absolutely. that s what s going to hamper people, anybody who needs rescues. if you are in an evacuation zone, it is important to get out of there. you might not be able to even call for help after the storm passes through because of the cell service being down, power being out. cat 4 storm. wherever that eye lands, wherever it makes landfall, you know, 20 miles, 30 miles in either direction of that eye is going to definitely have power knocked out today. here s when a lot of floridians are bracing for. major, major hurricane category 4 on the side of the state that hasn t had a hit like that. tampa, for example, has exploded
today. what are you preparing for? at this time i would say most preparations are completed and it s a matter of hunkering down and waiting for the storm to pass. we ve made evacuation notices, we ve done the best we could educations and we ve got a great city staff. we have public safety on stand by. it s kind of like we ve been referencing with hurricane charlie, we re just going to have to hunker down, wait and pray. charlie is your reference point here, but what are you expecting compared to charlie? right now it s going to depend where landfall is. with charlie, we dodged a bullet. it hit further south and we didn t feel a lot of effects. depending where this eye lands, we could feel some very significant effects. like everyone s been saying,
when you re stuck on one of these eye lands, you are stuck unless you can fly out or you have a boat. you re there. once that storm made its way inland it broke down. because the elevation is so low and surrounded by water, it did not lose its strength. it was a bulldozer of wind and high water across the entire region. something we just haven t seen the likes of something like this. when we talk about storm surge, and you see a catamaran in the middle of the highway. you see how massive it was. tom, you are the best, thank you very much. as we continue our coverage of hurricane dorian, we ll take you back to charleston south carolina, in the direct path of the storm.