like a freight train. we re seeing record-breaking and terrifying storm surges throughout florida and ft. myers, the water is so high pickup trucks are almost completely submerged. water levels have risen more than 6 feet in the last switch ho seven hours. let s get to tom sater in the cnn weather center. an updated forecast should come any minute now. what should we expect? it was just handed to me. forgive me for reading off. we still have a category 4 hurricane and five miles east of punta gorda. it will stay at hurricane strength through orlando. this will rake the entire peninsula. we had grove city a gust of 128. when we talk about the southern kind here, a better picture on radar will give an indication what we re looking at. here is the new track. keeps it as a 4 of course now moving inland but notice it s a category one. it will lose strength now that it s interacting with a land mass. that s typical. however, the winds have expanded now as these storms do. in fa
various places that we would do wellness checks on and everybody is in good shape for now. that s good news for now. mayor of orlando florida buddy dire. thank you. we re standing by for the news conference from ron desantis as hurricane ian slams into the state of florida with winds up to 140 miles an hour. we ll bring that to you live. the pictures from ian are unbelievable. the storm made landfall with winds so strong one of the create s wind meters broke. hold on, here is governor desantis. let s listen in. areas in southwest florida, lee, charlotte and counties beyond that, we have seen life threatening storm surge as was predicted and collier county, santa bell, ft. myers beech and inner flooding so some of the counties in the interior of the
i fear the pictures from naples and st. myers. it will be a saddening scene tomorrow. this band 10 inches of rain will lift northward as the storm lifts and that s where the converging sets in, jake, and that s where the heavy rain sets in. however, it s not over with. i told you how much rain they ve had in the last couple weeks, the ground is completely saturated. the soil type in florida is only absorb so much. water runs quickly across it. we re getting good wind gusts. i just mentioned the 120. here is the problem. the root systems of trees are going to be extremely weak and saturated with rain and more rain to come. you toss this band of rainfall on that area and then you toss a swath of tropical storm forced winds well over 350 miles, you re going to have tens and tens and tens of thousands of trees down, downing power lines. we got over a million without power now. that s just the beginning. water rescues, power outages across the entire peninsula of florida. as a meteorologist
he s got within the hour. it s interesting to watch the system. if you look at the colors, they re on the north side. notice the green and dry mentioning so the rain totals are lower here. however, with this brighter color and this heavy rainfall are still some tremendous winds. so here he is in punta gorda and rai rainfall squeezing in but the whole system moves off in this direction, he ll be hit with the back winds but will take awhile. they are out to the west. as the whole system slides, he has a massive eye wall to contend with just as long as it took him to get to the eye, it s going to take him that much time to get through the other side of the eye wall, maybe longer because we re seeing that expansive rain shaft that s back in and around that western flank. so even though this is part of
following the breaking news, hurricane ian making landfall. winds as high as 150 miles per hour making ian a high-end category 4 hurricane, almost a category 5. already more than 1 million customers are without power in the state of florida. let s go to brian todd in st. petersburg, florida right now. brian, tell us what you re seeing. reporter: okay, jake, we got wind of a some damage here at a manufactured home park and we re here now. we just checked it out. we consulted with a local policeman that said there is another one here, another home in similar condition. check this out. a roof almost completely ripped off this home here. you see the debris over here and