Hurricane Ian Spews 155 MPH Winds, Heading for Orlando

Hurricane Ian approached Category 5 status with sustained winds of 155 mph as it barreled toward Florida’s southwest coast this morning expected to trudge its way up toward Orlando tonight.

At 10 a.m., the National Hurricane Center said the center of Ian was located about 60 miles west of Naples and 65 miles southwest of Punta Gorda and 180 miles south-southwest of Orlando moving north-northeast at 10 mph.

Storm surge from Englewood to Bonita Beach including Charlotte Harbor is forecast to hit from 12-18 feet. Surge up to 10 feet is expected north to Longboat Key near Sarasota and up to 12 feet south past Naples to the Everglades.

“Clearly, this is a very powerful major hurricane that’s going to have major impacts, both on impact in southwest Florida, but then as it continues to work through the state,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said from the state Emergency Operations Center in Tallahassee this morning. “It is going to have major, major impacts in terms of wind, in terms of rain, in terms of flooding, so this is going to be a nasty, nasty day — two days.”

Power outages were beginning to pile up across the state. As of 10:30 a.m. Wednesday, nearly 200,000 people in the state were without power, mostly in Collier, Miami-Dade, Charlotte, Lee, Sarasota, Manatee, Broward and Palm Beach counties according to poweroutage.us.

DeSantis later appeared with power company linemen awaiting deployment during a press conference in Lake City noting the storm was likely to bring tragic results.

“So just understand the impact of the storm is going to be enormous,” he said. “There’s obviously some people who are in harm’s way by choice having hunkered down in their areas and we’re praying for them. Obviously there’s going to be there’s going to be rescue efforts made as soon as it’s safe to do so. ... It’s going to be going to be a tragic event in many ways. But it’s something that we’re going to dig in on. We’re going to be there. We’re going to stand with the people who are most affected.”

Portions of this article retrieved from the Orlando Sentinel.

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