of the florida coast of that this is sanibel island, an island decimated by hurricane ian. right now there s no way to get help in to sanibel. the only bridge that connected the island to the mainland, it s a long causeway, it s caved in. so there s no way to get on or off the island unless you travel by boat. and that s been incredibly difficult for anyone to do. and that loss right now spans the florida coast. i ll show you cape coral. our bill weir was here today. this is a picture he took. you can see home after home totally destroyed and flooded. the ones that are still standing, you can see siding ripped off. at one point ian s winds were 155 miles an hour. we re going to have much more from bill weir in a moment. not far from where he took those images, ft. myers beach, striking images of what is left. not much. the beach community 48 hours ago looked like that. now, take a look at this. estero boulevard, 24 hours later. a restaurant called the whale surrounded by debr
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
Moves off in the entire peninsula will feel the effects. tropical storm force winds extend 175 miles on each end of this storm. for the last couple of weeks, they ve been inundated with heavier than normal rainfall almost twice as much as they would typically have. this is the rainy season for them. when you look at the radar and we ll show you rainfall estimates, this is a big deal. notice how it s a comma shape. getting dry air across the south into the southwest and into the southeastern quadrants. that is wonderful news. that was never the problem. the problem is, jake, we ve had this trough moving in from the eastern u.s. that s the trough that would push the system and nudge it towards the coast. however, there is a battle between these two air masses, which is going to win out? looks like irma is pretty much winning even though it was edging eastward. the problem is underlying in the
Tomorrow, anyway, so they re really hoping people stay off the road. and really the big message we re getting from folks is stay home and cheer on the steelers rather than brave this weather. that s a good reason to stay home, right? polo, thank you very much. now our meteorologist tom seder joins me now. we re so glad to have you on a night like this. what is in store? in some cases, poppy, it s just really ramping up. other areas it s improving and things are going quite well. when you look at these warnings, though, we ve been showing you, just yesterday the warnings looked just like this but they were coming out of the dakotas and iowa. 14 inches in des moines, parts of minnesota, missouri and illinois. but you get down to arkansas, how about mississippi up to 9 inches. once again, it s almost like a big horse d shoe. the comma shape you re seeing on
To louisiana and mississippi this week to survey the damage left behind from ida, which is now pushing out of louisiana and dumping heavy rains on alabama and mississippi. flooding, even tornados in some area, are still a big concern. tom seder is tracking ida for it, what s left of it. tom, where is the storm now and what can be expected? the center still a tropical storm. later tonight most likely a depression. it ll take the rest of the evening and overnight to leave the state. but a much different picture, more of a comma shape, not the large red buzzsaw we saw yesterday after staying overland for six hours as a category 4. it takes hours to release all of this energy so a tornado watch still in effect, it s going to be ending soon, but it s these bands that have been off to the east. we still have flood warnings into mississippi and alabama,