Hurricane Ian makes Florida landfall with 250 km/h winds

It is one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S.

Hurricane Ian made landfall Wednesday in southwest Florida as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the U.S., swamping city streets with water and smashing trees along the coast.

The hurricane’s centre struck Wednesday afternoon near Cayo Costa, a protected barrier island just west of heavily populated Fort Myers.

The massive storm was expected to trigger flooding across a wide area of Florida as it crawls northeastward across the peninsula.

Mark Pritchett stepped outside his home in Venice around the time the hurricane came ashore about 56 kilometres to the south. He called it “terrifying.”

“I literally couldn’t stand against the wind,” Pritchett wrote in a text message shortly after landfall. “Rain shooting like needles. My street is a river. Limbs and trees down. And the worst is yet to come.”

The Category 4 storm slammed the coast with 240 km/h winds and pushed a wall of storm surge accumulated during its slow march over the Gulf of Mexico.

About 2.5 million people were ordered to evacuate southwest Florida before the storm hit. Though expected to weaken as it marched inland at about14 km/h, Ian’s hurricane force winds were likely to be felt well into central Florida.

Deaths from the hurricane had already been reported in Cuba, where two people were killed as Ian tore into the island as a major hurricane Tuesday, bringing down the country’s electrical grid.

“This is going to be a nasty nasty day, two days,” Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said, stressing that people in Ian’s path along the coast should rush to the safest possible shelter and stay there.

Off the coast on Sanibel Island, just south of where Ian made landfall, traffic cameras hours earlier showed swirling water that flooded streets and was halfway up mailbox posts. Seawater rushed out of Tampa Bay as the storm approached, leaving parts of the muddy bottom exposed, and waves crashed over the end of a wooden pier at Naples.

Ian had strengthened rapidly overnight, prompting Fort Myers handyperson Tom Hawver to abandon his plan to weather the hurricane at home and head across the state to Fort Lauderdale. “We were going to stay and then just decided when we got up, and they said 155 mile-per-hour (about 250 km/h) winds,” Hawver said. “We don’t have a generator. I just don’t see the advantage of sitting there in the dark, in a hot house, watching water come in your house.”

‘‘ I literally couldn’t stand against the wind. Rain shooting like needles. My street is a river. Limbs and trees down. And the worst is yet to come.

MARK PRITCHETT FLORIDA RESIDENT