in the united states and all around the world. i m john vause at the cnn center in atlanta. i knelt when i am in florida where hurricane ian bringing record storm surges, flash flooding in an unknown amount of destruction. it made landfall with winds just under category five, now it s a category one slowly moving into central florida with winds around 145 kilometers an hour. millions of homes and businesses have been left in the dark. some so badly damaged by ian that there is concerns that they may not be able to be rebuilt. the governor of florida warns about the dangers that lie ahead. overwhelmingly it s been that surge the biggest issue and the flooding that as resulted of that in some areas we think it s hit 12 feet. this is been a big storm and it s done a lot of damage as it is. it s gonna continue to move through the state of florida. you are gonna see hurricane-force winds in places in central florida perhaps. it s clearly a very strong tropical storm. a storm w
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 is not charlie. this is florida s katrina. charlie could almost fit inside the eye. the wind speeds of charlie were so significant but only in a small place. this storm has wind, surge, flooding, waves and even rainfall inside of florida of almost
is only beginning. sandra: for those of us who have lived through hurricanes we know how scary they can be. chief meteorologist is with us tracking the storm and the latest tally on some of the winds that are being reported across that state. what are we seeing, rick? so far, john, i m glad we had the video that popped up from 2017 up in jacksonville, because jacksonville is going to get storm surge again from this storm, which is pretty hard to imagine. this is a look at the winds recorded so far, verified naples, 112 miles an hour, still with kinds of the worst of the wind offshore, it has not made its way there just yet. so we have a long road ahead. all right, every hour now we are getting an update here, so this is the 2:00 p.m. update. no changes in the last three hours, pressure still at 937 millibars, moving north/northeast at nine miles an hour. we are looking at that every hour. often times when you have a storm making landfall it starts to weaken a bit, interac
dangerous and it s really the lack of visibility. we can barely see 100 yards in either direction and obviously with the winds blowing at this speed if there is debris flying through the air i don t want to be out in the middle of that and get caught up side the head by some flying branch or anything like that reporter: hold on one second, ed. stay where you are. stay where you are right now because some of these big trees are surrounding this hotel. i don t know if they re going to make it. they re starting to creep out. look, the palm tree is an extraordinary piece of vegetation. there s no question about it. they re built to bend. there are a lot of trees that aren t that and they re starting to split and fail under the strain on them and we ve been watching it and the concern is that these trees are going to go into the structures across and while they may not look physically impressive to you, we re talking about thousands and thousands of pounds and even more of that force
Have got a full moon which happens to be a super moon which means the moon is closer to earth, bigger tides. the deck was kind of stacked before this even came up the shoreline. here is the storm surge. we knew it was going to happen. as soon as the winds shifted, it s bringing stuff with it off the beach. they ve shut the road off right here all the way up the line around the bend about a half mile up because water is it looks to me about a foot and a half or two feet deep right that the bend. it s all storm surge flooding, not rain flooding. that s saltwater. they blocked off the road here. they don t want anyone driving on it obviously. look at the foam that s left up. it took everything and is pushing it through. i ve been looking at the beach junk.