cuba saw significant flooding and, is just now getting power back in some areas after nearly the entire island was plunged into darkness. now this morning, is ethan s world toward tampa, residents woke up to this eerie sight. nearly all the water had receded out of tampa bay. the storm pulled all the water from the shore as it s winds whipped around, counterclockwise, before shoving it back towards land hours later. around the same time, the natural hurricane center increased their predictions for how much storm surge ian will bring. the revised estimates stand 12 to 18 feet along the coast, from inglewood to benin a beach. you can see here in the purple section on this map. you have seen waters rise to record-breaking levels throughout the day. that s naples. naples, florida, the water road six feet above the normal high tide, nearly submerging cars. in fort myers beach the storm surge has driven the water 8 to 20 feet, flooding homes, leaving some residents trapped. one fam
average, storms are moving a bit more slowly. even more important that we haven t touched on, the fact that warmer air holds more water vapor. when a storm comes along, as they always do, there is more water vapor for that storm to dump on us than it was 50 or hundred years ago. although you mentioned that any given hurricane is not the result of climate change, we are able to put numbers on just how much worse climate change made a specific hurricane. with hurricane harvey, it is estimated that nearly 40% of the rain that fell during harvey, and in some places it was over 50 inches of rain, could not have occurred if that same hurricane had happened 100 years ago as it easily could have. it was estimated even worse that more areas flooded and more economic damage has occurred because you might be used to 20 inches or 30 inches and be prepared for that, but once you get into the 40 and 50-inch range, that s when the
i do want to stress that this is just right where we are in a very low area. we have plenty of escape routes over here right now, and so we are not flirting with danger in a way that some people might think. i want to make clear that if we think we are seeing flash flooding coming our way, we will not be wasting time in getting out of the way of that. that is something that is a concern in orlando. when you go overnight and morning hours, we re looking at the worst of what s left of being here in orlando, we can see wind gusts up to 90 miles an hour. the bigger concern is the potential for more than two feet of rain to hit certain parts of this area, which could lead to flash flooding. at this point, officials don t want anybody on the roadways. after 2 pm eastern time, people were being told in orlando to be off of the roads. at this point, people should be in place, where they are going to ride out the storm. we have not yet heard of any major power outages, cell service is holding s
patterson is up the coast and st. petersburg. he s up joining me now. steve, how is it looking now? you know, you could say that this area with all the modeling, of course, i have a storm here as of yesterday, 24 hours ago, this is where the brunt of the storm was supposed to land. that didn t happen. that doesn t mean that this, that this area couldn t face it is a faster. we are feeling it right now, the wind in the rain significantly picking up as the sun drops. we expect more to come. a surge is still possible. you can t see it now, but tampa bay is basically just over my right shoulder. earlier we saw this crazy event where the bay essentially drained out and the hydro power generated from that storm sucked into the gulf. that has to go somewhere coming back. so we expect between of 4 to 6-inch surge or so. that s after this wind event,
worried about being life-threatening, the storm surge, now beginning to recede, and we still don t know exactly how bad. we know it was worse and for myers, vinita beach, down to naples. that was where the peak storm surge was. we don t know how high, possibly 10 to 12 feet in fort myers. if so, that was catastrophic. we will see those pictures tomorrow. the water will be gone but you ll see how high the water goes and the damage did. they just issued a flash flood emergency. this goes from sarasota to sebring. this is on the north and west side. this is the rain portion of the forecast that is very concerning, what they are calling widespread life-threatening flash floods. this is why we have a flash flood emergency. they re telling people in this area to get to higher ground because the water is rising quickly. already reports of 17 to 20 inches of rain, and it s still pouring in that region. that s what happens when you have a slow-moving hurricane. it s only moving at eight miles a