that looks chilly. it certainly does. but how could drones help rescue swimmers in distress? lj takes the plunge to find out. and then from cold and wet to hot and dry. laura checks out the ai watching for wildfires. the alert s come through. i didn t even notice that, but the camera did. as cars get ever more powerful and ever more numerous, the quest for road safety is an ongoing battle. some cities, like london, have introduced congestion zones, which reduce the amount of traffic and make things safer for pedestrians, but there s also research, of course, going into how to protect the passengers inside the vehicles too. car safety testing is still largely done on the same crash test dummies that we used in the 1980s, and they were based on the male form. but now a team of engineers in sweden are in the final stages of developing the first average female crash test dummy. so, what happens to a woman s body during a crash? shona mccallum has been to linkoping in sweden to fi
and tom homan are here to weigh in. but first. our luggage is missing, mia. canceled southwest, hopefully will get a refund. i have three kids. gillian: stranded travelers are begging southwest air to get its act together as the holiday travel meltdown is stretching on yet another day, flights going nowhere. welcome to america reports. gillian turner in washington. great to be with you. anita: always great to spend two hours with you, gillian. john and sandra have the day off. southwest customers are not only struggling, but a good chunk of the hundreds of thousands delayed passengers have no idea where their luggage is. they are desperate to find bags with crucial medicine and baby gear. gillian: those hopes hoping to be rebooked today, not having much luck. more than 2300 southwest flights so far have been canceled already. the airline says the trouble is not going to end most likely until early next week. anita: and the big wigs blame the blizzard for the t
hour. the category 4 storm is currently barreling across southwest florida with winds up to 150 miles per hour. more than 1.5 million people in the state are currently without power, and that number is growing. but the most imminent and life-threatening concern is the storm surge. some areas seeing 12 to 18 feet. to give you an idea of just how severe that is, a meteorologist for the national hurricane center says no one alive has seen 12 feet of storm surge in that area, and many areas could take years to recover. just take a look at this surge today. the dangers are a reality for many who chose to hunker down and wait out the storm despite the evacuation orders. take a look at what family told nbc affiliate wbbh as their house flooded. so this is ft. myers beach on cutlass drive. it s four of us. four of us? on cutlass drive. and you re on the second floor already? yeah. six of us in here. do you have do you have a roof? 15 feet of water now. there s 15 fe
just after 3:00 p.m. east coast, the eye crossed over a barrier island near ft. myers, florida. this is a live look at the satellite right now. you can see the immense size and strength mof the hurricane. the winds are 150 miles an hour. that s just shy of making this a monstrous category 5. this was the scene just ahead of landfall captured by a storm chaser in pine island, florida. these conditions are expected to worsen in the coming hours, believe it or not. more than 850,000 customers are without power across the state of florida. another major concern today is the storm surge. the storm surge is the abnormal rise of ocean water that s generated by the storm. the lee county sheriff expects that to be, quote, life changing today. that area includes ft. myers and the city of cape coral where the emergency management manager tells cnn, hurricane ian will likely be one of the worst the region has ever seen. we are covering the storm as only cnn can with our team of journalis