to the mainland. and above the shear scale of the wreckage, the storm left some areas completely unrecognizable. one person told the tampa bay times lee koth looks like a bomb has been dropped. momentarily, we ll go live to fort myers beach where this side by side shows the destruction to the popular pier. here s a man from fort myers who had a terrifying experience. i stayed here as long as i could until i got scared for my life and went across the street. the it didn ts last too long. the big bad wolf puffed it away. i watched my house disappear with everything in it. right pfr my eyes. right before his eyes. i want to bring in kat park in south carolina where hurricane ian is expected to make landfall soon. what are the conditions you re seeing? what are you hearing about what you re expecting in the next couple hours or so? reporter: so we have been out here for several hours now. i can can tell you the landscape has changed dramatically. behind me is the ashley riv
off of the gulf coast there. we re not going to get a sense of it until tomorrow. but yes, it looks pretty path down in. and we ll be talking about this later in the hour. thanks, chris. and thank you for joining us. hurricane ian continues to create a swath of in made landfall just after 3:00 this afternoon in southwestern florida, near k o connor, a island off of the coast of fort myers. ian came ashore as a category four hurricane with 150 mile per hour winds. just a few miles per hour shy of a category five. only for hurricane stronger than that have made landfall in the united states ever. but it is not just the strength of the storm, it is the size. this is the view of hurricane in from the international space station this afternoon. just showing how massive the storm is. the national river describes in as battering the florida peninsula with tied and winds, and flooding. ian has just now weakened to a category two storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 miles
of biblical proportions. ian is a cat 4 storm bringing 140 mile-per-hour winds and leaving a wake of destruction in its path. the national hurricane center is warning of catastrophic window damage with an unsuburb viable storm surge of up to 18 feet. it is expected to dump 2 feet of rain across the state bringing unprecedented flooding and destruction. entire neighborhoods are now undersea as water levels continue to rise. homes are floating down the middle of the street and people are swimming in their living rooms. by the way authorities say it s a very bad idea. who knows what s in that water. and first responders rescue services can t escape the flooding either. this fire department in naples is completely under water. leaving the city s residents on their own. and things are even worse in the air where hurricane hunters are flying into the heart of the storm. watch. oh [bleep] jesse: more than 2 million people in the state were told to evacuate, with thousands more h
have been ordered to evacuate as hurricane ian is bearing down on the states gulf coast. just a moment governor ron desantis will join us. the latest from this category three storm. fox weather meteorologist ian oliver is with us. this looks like it is going to be a direct hit right over it looks like somewhere north of fort myers right towards tampa. ian: still a reasonable scenario here. this is a monster of a storm. still a category three as you mention. 120 miles per hour. we had this inner i wall that has been degrading. what that does is it spreads out of that winfield over at much larger area. we have seen these impacts start already. we need to warnings throughout the afternoon and evening across much of south florida. we got some active ones right now. a lot of spin in these powerful outer bands of the intense. 90 miles out of the west of key west. we reported there a wind gusts up to 71 miles per-hour miles per hour. that is greatly removed from the intent in a. w
forecasters expect ian to intensify into a major hurricane in the next 24 hours before it makes landfall somewhere along florida s west coast. ian poses a formidable storm surge threat for the tampa area. let s begin with chad myers, he has the latest hurricane center advisory. and chad, something that i found interesting here, officials were saying there is a higher than usual unpredict ability about how strong this storm will be and where it is going to land. true. and i think we re getting we re anxious. we want this to be perfect. we want all of the models to line up and say this is what is going to happen and that hasn t happened. a few models on the right and the left, not really agreeing. so an 80 mile per hour storm at the 11:00 advisory two minutes ago. the storm does move across cuba overnight and into the southwestern part of florida with winds and waves already on shore by 8:00 wednesday morning. there will already be wind. but the storm is still growing. wher