hello. live in atlanta, 3:00 a.m. in florida. we continue to follow the path of hurricane ian. now, weaker, but still a major worry. that hurricane has finally been downgraded to a category-1 storm, but it s still moving menacingly right above the state of florida and heading northeast winds, approximately 75 miles or 125 kilometers per hour, still lashing large sections of the state.just 12 hours after it crashed in southwest florida as an almost category-5 hurricane. as you can imagine, there have been power outages with more than 2 million homes and businesses in the dark. that s about 20% of customers throughout the state the mayor of fort myers, meantime, saying, 96% of his entire city has lapsed with electricity. meanwhile, charlotte county, florida, telling cnn, rescuers can only do so much during the height of the storm. unfortunately, our dispatch continues to receive calls from the 911 center, and just like every other county, the emergency response, they get up a
parts of the state on a slow, this is really an issue, it s churning on the destructive crawl north. orlando now in the crosshairs of this historic storm that s produced record rainfall and storm surge. power outages are a major problem with more than 2 million customers in the dark across florida. water is just everywhere in many communities. in port charlotte, the storm blew the roof off of a hospital and it flooded the intensive care unit. ahead, we re going to speak to a doctor there, how they managed to protect patients and what the conditions now. fort myers has experienced some of the worst flooding in the storm. torrents of water just rushing into the streets trapping people in their homes. same for naples where officials say half of the streets aren t even passable because high water has inundated them. although it s weakened, there is concern about ian regaining strength and threatening the southeast, georgia, the carolinas, and all declaring emergencies in advance.
climb along with the flood waters. we re learning at this hour that sheriff offices across the coast getting a number of calls from people trapped in their homes they didn t evacuate but as the lead county sheriff s office said winds need to drop to 45 miles per hour for them to safely attempt these rescues. we re going to have every corner of this disaster covered from reporters on the ground to residents in its path. but we begin in an area where residents have been advised to shelter in place, the tampa saint pete region and that s where we find fax weather s max gordon who is standing by. max what are folks bracing for there tonight? p pfrjts hey there, laura. well, this is an area where folks here were expecting the storm to make a direct hit and although it moved further to the south we aren t necessarily out of the woods just yet. some areas here are expecting around 20 inches of rain, and we are experiencing some of those heavy bands of rain right now as well as those
is only beginning. sandra: for those of us who have lived through hurricanes we know how scary they can be. chief meteorologist is with us tracking the storm and the latest tally on some of the winds that are being reported across that state. what are we seeing, rick? so far, john, i m glad we had the video that popped up from 2017 up in jacksonville, because jacksonville is going to get storm surge again from this storm, which is pretty hard to imagine. this is a look at the winds recorded so far, verified naples, 112 miles an hour, still with kinds of the worst of the wind offshore, it has not made its way there just yet. so we have a long road ahead. all right, every hour now we are getting an update here, so this is the 2:00 p.m. update. no changes in the last three hours, pressure still at 937 millibars, moving north/northeast at nine miles an hour. we are looking at that every hour. often times when you have a storm making landfall it starts to weaken a bit, interac
now hitting south florida and the storm s eye is off of cuba s coast moving into the warm waters which means the storm could grow and get for powerful. it hit werp cuba hard overnight with winds and heavy rain just at-battering the island. the forecast models have it projected to make landfall in tampa bay as a major hurricane. storm surge is one of the biggest threats from the storm. and as much as two feet of rain could be falling in some parts of florida from this. officials there saying right now they are urging people into the storm s path to make the final presentations and of course to get out before it is too late. let s start with cnn s meteorologist chad myers tracking this for us. what is the latest. it does look like the 11:00 advisory has brought this storm a little bit farther to the south. we re still waiting for what we call the discussion. all of the words that they use to describe what their reason was, what the meaning is, where this is going from here. s