hello, and welcome to our viewers in the united states and around the world. i m john vause, at the cnn center in atlanta. as we head into the midnight hour on the u.s. east coast, almost the entire state of florida is bracing for the impact of hurricane ian, a monster storm stressing 500 miles across. which earlier made landfall on cuba, blocking out the eyelids electricity grid and causing a nationwide blackout. 11 million people right now are in the dark, waiting for morning to assess the damage. as of, now there are no reports of fatalities. since leaving cuba, ian has grown in strength, fueled by the warm waters of the gulf of mexico, as it heads towards florida, now category 3, with sustained winds of 135 miles per hour. along with life-threatening storm surge, florida is facing catastrophic flooding and strong powerful winds. all they, long tuesday, residents across the state braced for the hurricane to make landfall. now expected the first forecast, and further south.
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
this is absolutely nuts. ainsley: that is new video already showing the storm s power as it brings devastating floods down it the key west area. we expect to see more of those, tossing planes around like toys. todd: we have team coverage now. fox weather correspondent nicole valdez. we start with fox weather correspondent robert ray in fort myers. robert? ainsley: trouble obviously with his microphone. we can t hear you, robert. right now, it does look bad. fox weather correspondent nicole valdez continues our coverage, she is in tampa. we are only starting to rapidly see conditions deteriorating here for the tampa bay area as hurricane ian, that now category 4 storm. you just mentioned with winds at 155 miles per hour. it is teetering on a category 5 storm. you heard governor ron desantis there saying our emergency management officials are planning and preparing to see a category 5 storm. that is how seriously they are taking this situation knowing what we could se
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
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