just after 3:00 p.m. east coast, the eye crossed over a barrier island near ft. myers, florida. this is a live look at the satellite right now. you can see the immense size and strength mof the hurricane. the winds are 150 miles an hour. that s just shy of making this a monstrous category 5. this was the scene just ahead of landfall captured by a storm chaser in pine island, florida. these conditions are expected to worsen in the coming hours, believe it or not. more than 850,000 customers are without power across the state of florida. another major concern today is the storm surge. the storm surge is the abnormal rise of ocean water that s generated by the storm. the lee county sheriff expects that to be, quote, life changing today. that area includes ft. myers and the city of cape coral where the emergency management manager tells cnn, hurricane ian will likely be one of the worst the region has ever seen. we are covering the storm as only cnn can with our team of journalis
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
gorda. the wind meter broke. so have no idea if it got stronger after that. we were told to brace for possibly nine feet of storm surge here. we are a good six blocks from the water s edge. thankfully, we haven t seen that kind of storm surge kicking up in this part yet. the emergency managers of charlotte county had a press conference a few minutes ago. they said about 60,000 people are in the red zone. they have no idea how many people refused to evacuate. thankfully, no critical calls. even if someone were to call 911 right now, no one could come help them. it s too violent right now. we are bracing right now. randy is not far from me. randi kaye? randi kaye, what are you seeing? we are at the top of a
guys, i m dissttriacted by whatm seeing up here. wow, look at the size of this tree coming down. again, this is one of those times when the authorities would say don t go check your properties during the eye of the hurricane. don t do this. we re doing this for you. but it s just a little taste of what s happened due to those 110 mile an hour plus wind speeds we had here punta gorad. they were probably higher than that but the wind meter, the instrument actually broke at the punta gorda airport so we don t know exactly how high it got but wow, there is one little example of the force of the these winds here, as well. so many homes in this area and going south of us are con canal so we re really interested once it s safe to get out and look at the flooding because that is the life changer. they really battened down the
when they come through the intersections here. they have a police sergeant. they have a wind meter with them. they basically stop before the intersection. they whistle them through and make a run through the intersection as they re trying to get through, but a lot of these balloons are scraping along the road. look, trying to go through an intersection right now. we ll see how it does. but the wind has been a little squirrely. sometimes gusting, you know, probably in the 20s or so, but it s very, very difficult for these balloon handlers to keep track of them. all that said, the people here having a great time. happy thanksgiving. happy thanksgiving! reporter: enormous, enormous crowds as always. and we have the marching band coming through, and they re actually playing. so it s nice to get a little bit of them as well. 1,000 clowns. 1,200 cheerleaders and dancers. a massive undertaking. some 8,000 people it takes to put this show on every year as