delayed across the united states. when you look what s happened in florida s own incredible story playing at an incredible amount of rainfall, 140 mile stretch where there s rainfall close to 20 inches in this spot. incredible flash flooding exists. 20 inches of rain, that s incredible. appreciate it. right now to cnn s gloria, who s in tampa, florida a city many thought would be directly in the path when it made landfall. but the worst is yet to come. according to city officials. i want to tell you john even since the last time i spoke to you conditions have begun to improve slightly. the wind has slowed down a little bit, the wind is starting to taper off, but ian is still very much above us and at this point it is without question that ian will leave a historic amount of damage in its path, flooding that storm
this update just moments ago. hurricane ian is a storm moving closer to floor at that s west coast bringing high winds, extremely heavy rain and life threatening storm surge flooding. already ian hitting key west with major storm surge flooding. more than 2 1/2 million people now under some level of evacuation warnings. officials escalating their urgent appeals to evacuate. if you are in an evacuation zone, your time to evacuate is coming to an end. you need to evacuate now. meteorologist chad myers is in the cnn weather center. chad, what s the latest on the predicted storm track here? it is still forecast to put all of that water into charlotte harbor, christine. this is and has been kind of looked at as a charrincharlie, s
could come on shore, will not call it landfall until the center makes its way across land, but the first eyewall coming on shore and the back eyewall will rapidly make its way on. tornado watch, tornadoes throughout the day today, night tonight and into tomorrow, and farther towards the north and also going to watch massive inland flooding in addition to the storm surge flooding. the storm has not weakened at all, 12 to 18 feet storm surge at the highest points just where it makes landfall and to the right of that, and then inland flooding. the national weather service does not do this very often, high risk for flooding, anywhere in the red, happens a couple times a year with massive rain events, this is one of them. we have it for today and tomorrow. massive area, i-4 corridor, even far interior sections of florida
the wind definitely blowing there. we can see your hood flapping in the wind. it is dodging a direct hit from henri. give me some updates on where you are. reporter: right. i think this is one of those bands coming through. we re seeing the winds pick up. some rain coming down a bit. we ll turn this way. you will get some rain into the lens. we may have to clear it off occasionally. some of that is the salt water spray coming up as the waves come ashore, bounce off this pier here and off these boats. we re getting some of that spray. there is the concern of a bit of storm surge flooding. we had high tide here at about 8:30 this morning and so that s now gone out. we re not looking at the worst case scenario with the flooding we could have if the high tide had aligned with the storm coming ashore. there is still a concern even though, it s downgraded to a