this is don lemon tonight, you re watching our coverage of in, making its way up the florida peninsula. we have all the news coverage this evening, it is dumping rain on this entire area. lots of water. but also the wind, pushing the wind all across the state of florida. our crews are out in the field, we re covering it all for you. we ve got bill weir, bill is joining us from punta gorda florida, also brian todd is in is in derek van damme is in breaking tin for us. i want to other meteorologist, our expert, mr. tom seders in the weather center. tom, i am getting so much rain, lots of rain that have been dumped on me for the last hour. and it seemed to come in on cue, we re watching the radar, the rain came right in. it s just sitting on top of us, not going anywhere. in fact that northern periphery of the storm system in the last couple of model runs in the last couple of days really has been showing that that northern periphery is where we re gonna have that heavy rain
hello. live in atlanta, 3:00 a.m. in florida. we continue to follow the path of hurricane ian. now, weaker, but still a major worry. that hurricane has finally been downgraded to a category-1 storm, but it s still moving menacingly right above the state of florida and heading northeast winds, approximately 75 miles or 125 kilometers per hour, still lashing large sections of the state.just 12 hours after it crashed in southwest florida as an almost category-5 hurricane. as you can imagine, there have been power outages with more than 2 million homes and businesses in the dark. that s about 20% of customers throughout the state the mayor of fort myers, meantime, saying, 96% of his entire city has lapsed with electricity. meanwhile, charlotte county, florida, telling cnn, rescuers can only do so much during the height of the storm. unfortunately, our dispatch continues to receive calls from the 911 center, and just like every other county, the emergency response, they get up a
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in the last couple of model runs in the last couple of days really has been showing that that northern periphery is where we re gonna have that heavy rainfall. already, we have seen as much as 12 to even 19 inches of rain. that s 2 to 3 months worth of rain that is falling. we ve got flash flood emergency across the area from arcadia up toward orlando, it won t be long we re gonna be in the clearing back in areas of fort myers, dry air to the south, rain totals will be much less. but again, look at the loop we re gonna find out better about the totals of the surge, how high did it get, we know close to a foot in some areas. the gauge broke, in naples after hit seven feet. but again, the storm continues to move up now passing just north of sebring. but again, the winds were so strong it knocked out a lot of our weather instruments in this area. again, we re not exactly gonna know how strong the winds are in every area, but cape coral 140 miles per hour, sustained winds were quite strong
across the state of florida. again, there it goes. pushing across the areas of eastern florida in a couple hours. 150 mile parel winds speeds at landfall, the significant storm surge as a result of it. the highest ever observed in fort myers for hurricane ian. one element i want to show you, because looking into the data sets around the screen, try different in the current windspeed shifted towards the east. look at it here. all of the weather instruments, with the power outages in the dark, and the storm system, couldn t find too many in the way of current wind gusts. even orlando s airport wasn t giving me the system update from south of orlando pushing to the east. the latest numbers, 2.3 million customers in the dark in a large area of florida. the system is beginning to make a push towards the eastern shoreline, near the east coast again, and we expect a sharp right turn. if it maintains intensity in the coming hours, doesn t drop back down to a tropical system, i wouldn t be surp