off of the gulf coast there. we re not going to get a sense of it until tomorrow. but yes, it looks pretty path down in. and we ll be talking about this later in the hour. thanks, chris. and thank you for joining us. hurricane ian continues to create a swath of in made landfall just after 3:00 this afternoon in southwestern florida, near k o connor, a island off of the coast of fort myers. ian came ashore as a category four hurricane with 150 mile per hour winds. just a few miles per hour shy of a category five. only for hurricane stronger than that have made landfall in the united states ever. but it is not just the strength of the storm, it is the size. this is the view of hurricane in from the international space station this afternoon. just showing how massive the storm is. the national river describes in as battering the florida peninsula with tied and winds, and flooding. ian has just now weakened to a category two storm with maximum sustained winds of 105 miles
swift boats, all ready to move in and begin to go door-to-door when it is clear enough to be able to do so. power outages have slammed half a million. that is the latest number that we have over the course of this hour that we re now in. floridians on the ground as ian barrels towards their homes, their businesses. we have people all across the state with updates about different sections of the state, what it feels like, what s going on there. fox team coverage with all of our great weather team out there spread across the state as well. we begin with katie burn who is in orlando. katie, what can you tell us from where you are? all right. let s go to max gordon first. max is in tampa bay. max, tell us what you re seeing where you are. hi, martha. so we ve been hearing a lot about the storm surge concerns in the fort myers area. but up here where we are on the north end of the storm, we ve seen an erie sight along old tampa bay. we ve seen what is known as reverse storm surg
parts of the state getting hit with wind gusts up to 126 miles per hour. this report coming out of redfish pass, a sform surge up to 18 feet is threatening important charlotte and the fort myers area. we have fox team coverage with steve harrigan where ian is making the direct hit. robert ray is in fort myers on how folks are dealing with this and rick reichmuth is in the fox weather center on how long the heat could last. given the slow movement, quit awhile. welcome. i m neil cavuto. a busy day right now and a monster of a hurricane that is big and also slow. that is the problem. it hangs around awhile. steve harrigan with more. steve? neil, we had the illusion for the last 15 or 20 minutes that things might be dying down. that was the eye of the storm. part of that eye passed over us. the skies got lighter, the heavy rain which has lashed for hours stopped completely. the winds died down. now the tail end of that storm is beginning to hit us, the back side of it. we ll s
in a surprise hearing this week, cassidy hutchinson, the former trump aide to chief of staff mark meadows, delivered to our stunning testimony to the january six committee. hutchinson took us inside the white house in the days leading up to and on january the six. as trump and his inner circle carried out their campaign to overturn our election. hutchison testified that repeated warnings of violence on that day were simply ignored by trump and other white house officials, including her boss. was it your understanding that mr. ornado told the president about weapons at the rally on the morning of january the six? that is what mr. are not related to me. here is how you characterized mr. meadows general response when people raised general concerns about what could happen on january six. so at the time and the days leading up to the six, there were lots of reports about how things might go bad on the six, even potential for violence. if i am hearing correctly, it seems to