have our fox news chief meteorologist rick reichmuth with us. rick this has been rough so far. really has. three things, the storm surge that broke records in fort myers and naples as well by a lot by the way, three feet higher than we had ever seen from any kind of storm surge in the past. that obviously causing all that flooding right along the immediate coast. then we have the winds, actual verified winds of 140 miles an hour in cape corral. a lot of this wind was really prolonged because it s such a slow-moving storm and then you have the rainfall. because it s so slow we get rainfall that just continues to batter the state and we ll see big time inland flooding concerns. this made land fall in the exact same space that hurricane charlie came on shore in 2004 which is amazing to have two massive hurricanes or two strong hurricanes like this come on shore in the exact same spot, hard to imagine, because it came on so strong, it s still a category 2 hurricane after having made land
have that 15-20 foot surge up tampa bay. but you want to know why this is very, very difficult to happen, and you saw it with charlie, because when a storm is moving parallel to the west coast of florida, the vectors around the storm change. and we see this, and there s actually papers on it done with typhoons in taiwan, that the frictional affects, if the storm is moving to the right of an island, parallel to it or the right of a peninsula, it will pull it in. and once it gets in, guess what it does? it goes looking for the water on the other side. you notice how hurricanes, when they re to the right of florida, tend to stay off shore, matthew, dorian, remember how they stayed offshore. because the same kind of frictional affect on the east coast will keep this offshore. so what you re seeing here is, like charlie remember charlie was forecasted up to tampa, too, remember? and where did it go? it went in south right here
officials are urging caution. police report getting calls from residents trapped in their homes in their attic from the rising water. governors across the southeast states have declared states of emergency. all flights thursday have been canceled as a dangerous posed by hurricane ian. let s go down to meteorologists petra. let us know the situation on where hurricane ian is heading. it s incredible to think that after ten hours a hurricane is still maintaining category one intensity, made landfall with 150 mile per hour winds, came ashore as a single strongest hurricane ever to impact the western florida peninsula since 2004 when hurricane charlie had 150 mile per hour winds. again an incredible perspective to share with you here. it s very rare and unusual to get a storm of this magnitude.
labor day hurricane of 1935. all of these storms, being billion dollar disasters. moments ago, ten billion dollars, and ten fatalities in the united states. the population along this region, since 2004, has increased dramatically. of course, systems are very similar wind speeds, but when you look at the cloud field, you look at the scope, the size of what charlie was, with those strong winds, to where he and, is essentially, doubling the size, shows you the potential as far as what sort of damage wewe can expect in the coming days witith this system, moving across this area. pedram, when we have eaten, hitting so hard, so fast, especially in comparison to other rerecent storms, it raises the question about climate change, and what degree that is fueling its power. we will say that conversation for another time. pedram javaheri, indeed, thank you for joining us, and thank you for joining us. i m kristie lu stout, my colleague, paula newton, is picking up our coverage of hurricane ian,
recall back in 2004 that is when hurricane charlie came racing across charlotte harbor, and that brought a lot of wind and storm surge but not a lot of wind. this hurricane ian is a completely different animal. we were taking cover earlier expecting the storm surge is going to be here in downtown punta gorda. we also took our cars up to a high floor of a parking garage here, but still we do see some water, and we are expecting still they re still forecasting this 8 to 12 foot storm surge here in punta gorda and charlotte county. but, anderson, we ve not seen that yet but we are now on the backside of the storm supposed to sit on top of us here still for several hours to go as we continue to watch and wait and see what happens. we know that there are high-water vehicles on standby here, 1,300 of them in the state. also the search and rescue teams will bow out. but in terms of what we re seeing and feeling here is just very, very strong winds and a