Page 33 - Pinellas County News Today : Breaking News, Live Updates & Top Stories | Vimarsana

zone, particularly in the southwest florida counties, your time to evacuate is coming to an end. you need to evacuate now. a life threatening category 4 storm headed right towards florida. i'm john berman live in tampa this morning. brianna keilar is in washington and that is the news from overnight. hurricane ian strength jentd to a category 4 storm with sustained winds of 140 miles per hour. wind gusts of 165 miles per hour. the storm forecast has adjusted somewhat south of where i am in tampa headed right towards the fort myers area in florida about 100 miles south of here, but ...

life-threatening storm surge. we just learned the updated storm surge projections for those areas is now staggers. it is now 12 to 18 feet. that is the warning. already more than 16 on,000 customers are without power across the state of florida. more than 2.5 million people are under an erag ways order or warning. governor desantis said residents in the cross hairs need to shelter in place, because it is too late to leave. >> if you are in any of those counties, it's no longer possible to safely evacuate. it's time to hunker down and prepare for this storm. this is a powerful storm...

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 p...

to be seen. there are programs that fema has. but it is not going to be commensurate to having had a policy. this is an issue we will have to d deal with. we deal with this. when you have this about the homeowners policy will cover certain things, but the flood policy covers probably the most significant risk for most homeowners in florida given the risk of flooding that we have in so many parts of our state. so we're sensitive to that. there is, obviously, going to be some folks that are going to be in need of support and relief and we are, obviously, going to work as best we can. i...

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. ka...