Here and all around me that s n pass until. there s more than a happen full of us on marco island. we got the bulk out. those that hunkered down it wasn t horrific winds but the water was unbelievable and a lot of people have permanent damage here due to the incredible amount of flooding that came with this storm and unexpected, as you know there was a lot of changes at the last minute when it s a few hundred miles south of cuba and it s wiggling 10 miles not east. nobody pays much attention but as i learned from my time in the
The statement we have our correspondents and our crews fanned out over the state of florida. bill is in punta gorda. brian todd is in largo. jerry is in bradenton and jeremy the weather center. bill, ace understand you re on lockdown tonight. you ever seen some of the biggest action with the wind and rain. what are you seeing where you are right now? well down it s calmed dion. there is a 9:00 curfew in punta gorda including media and a blackout with well over a million customers florida power & light. we saw the back end of the eye of the storm. once the eye passed over we thought we saw pretty stiff winds but the bag end of it we were trying to hold the hotel
Revised it to category 5. if you look at the core of the system the core of charlie would fit into the eye with room to spare. heavy rain bands have upon on the northern periphery. the winds are so strong it knock out our weather gauges from venice fort myers and naples many we fear the images that we will see from the air from charlotte harbor fort myers to naples, it could look like what we saw in mexico beach when michael moved in. that will be staggering. we don t know exactly how high the surge is in many locations because in naples it got up to 7 feet and the surge recorder broke to give us that height. there s only so many surge monitors along the coastline
To 18. we just don t know. we just don t moment but with the winds we have better equipment. i suspect, derek is right there is going to be a billion dollar disaster and they will retire the name ian most likely. it s interesting to note. think about all the storms that start with the letter i in history, irene, irma, ida, they just continue. there s so many of them. i think what we are going to find here is maybe just maybe waits stronger at land failed and the surge a little higher to the south than we really know right now. gentlemen thank you very much. bill i want you to be safe all our correspondents derek brian todd as well. we are going to get back to you checking with you throughout the hours on cnn. appreciate it we ve got a lot of ground to cover in the coming hours on cnn. we are live in florida as ian is making its way brutally across
He said he was driving over the bridge u.s. 43 and the wind was actually flexing his car windows. so he just cracked his window he thought to release the pressure and it blew the sun roof literally out of his suv. he had a wind monitor he said registered as 156 as a gust. i m wondering, you touched on that it that this storm was bigger than our instruments that it is was more fierce than we were able to measure. well it s very possible not just with the instruments as we mention, with the surge but with the winds as well. this is going to be really inspected. they re going to pore over all the data in the offseason and assess. we may know tomorrow how high the surge was. so many locations we don t know. governor desantis said his crews were reporting 12-foot surge. some of the forecasts were you
Don. all right, bill. i want you to stand by. i ll going to get to my colleague derek in bradenton. you like enthis going into a car wash with windows down and i know you re getting debris flying. i want to show viewers. we are getting the same thing. things are flying off the building from time to time. some of this flew over from earlier but it s a pretty dangerous situation here and i m sure it s dangerous where you are. you had some heavy winds earlier today. what s up now? don we are on our 12 of these tropical storm force gusts. we had hurricane winds earlier this afternoon for about six hours of time. hine ian is literally rewriting the record books across southwestern florida. it is credible to see the frosty of these winds clocking in by the way some gusts at 150 miles