all right, stay with msnbc throughout the evening as we continue to bring you live coverage of the devastating impact of hurricane ian in florida s florida. this is the readout. i turn it over to chris hayes. chris, off to you. thank you so much, joy. i really appreciated. this hour, one of the most powerful storms to hit the united states in decades is roaring across florida, bringing massive amounts of water and catastrophic winds. hurricane ian was just down graded to category three storm, maximum sustained winds of up to 125 miles per hour. but it made landfall in florida s west coast nearly four hours ago. ian was just shy of a category five. you can see from the satellite images, the day began with eons massive bands approaching florida from the south, where it wreaked havoc across the caribbean.
there is been a lot of polarization in reactions to politics. although some real progress on some bipartisan pieces of legislation. the previous president tended to see disasters through a kind of partisan lens, about who is getting hit, and who is not. i imagine you have some confidence that there will be some positive there has to be. as you well know, ian is one of the largest that we have seen in the history of florida. look, i grew up in florida. i ve worked as a first responder for almost 30 years. this is certainly not my first storm, but certainly the intensity of this storm should call all of us to concern.
he joins me from miami. i don t know if we have sound on him. jamie, what can you tell us about this storm, which does seem like, well, nearing worst-case scenario in terms of size, speed, and strength? it is. the huge size is just spreading the impacts across the florida peninsula. the slow speed is increasing the duration and of the damaging wind rains and the flood potential. look at this radar reflectivity. we re getting estimates of 4 to 5 inches port hour in those heavy winds. give us context for that. vessels like a lot and it seems near the high-end of what is physically possible for a storm to dump. those are incredibly heavy rainfall rates. i don t have reports but my suspicion is that flash flooding is probably occurring
are watching behind me, with this rain pummeling this area of the state, this is still hours before the worst of eons impact is expected in this part of florida, which should give you an idea of how powerful this storm is. even in the northern bands, we re getting the outer suites sweeps of ian wright. now this is already this bad. we are seeing. it is largely rain and wind. i m telling you that right now we are seeing the strongest gusts now, and they seem to be a little more sustained. earlier they were little pops but now the winds are picking up, more consistently, here in orlando. as of 2 pm officials have said they do not want anyone left on the roads here. we did continue to see a couple of cars but largely the roads have been ghost towns in the evening. they have open more shelters here. we know one that is at capacity here in orange county. the major theme parks, disney, and universal, i shut down now.
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