Hurricane Ian approaches Orlando as Category 1 storm at end of day of destruction across Florida peninsula

Hurricane Ian weakened again late Wednesday night and is now a Category 1 storm with top winds of 90 mph, down from 155 mph as it approached Florida earlier in the day.

The National Hurricane Center said Ian’s storm surge, winds and flooding in the Florida peninsula have been “catastrophic.”

The storm, which previously produced top winds of 155 mph, is forecast to weaken further over the next day as it travels across central Florida Wednesday night into Thursday morning, according to an 11 p.m. update from the National Hurricane Center.

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Ian, 70 miles south of Orlando at 11 p.m., is forecast to pass over the Titusville area and into the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday, the hurricane center’s latest advisory said. It will then move north Friday toward northeastern Florida, Georgia and South Carolina coasts and could still be near hurricane strength.

“It will still pack a formidable punch as it moves across the state of Florida along the I-4 corridor in the next couple of days,” said Jamie Rhome, acting director of the National Hurricane Center in a Facebook broadcast.

As the storm continued to batter the southwest coast, rescue work began for flooded neighborhoods.

“We are getting a significant number of calls of people trapped by water in their homes,” the Collier County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement explaining that it must prioritize emergencies. “Some are reporting life threatening medical emergencies in deep water. We will get to them first. Some are reporting water coming into their house but not life threatening. They will have to wait. Possibly until the water recedes.”

Ian made landfall on the Florida mainland at 4:35 p.m. Wednesday just south of Punta Gorda, coming ashore with 145 mph winds, the National Hurricane Center said. The storm previously made landfall on the island of Cayo Costa off Fort Myers.

At 11 p.m. the storm was moving north-northeast at 8 mph.

The National Weather Service Miami said in a 6 p.m. report that coastal Collier County is currently experiencing “extreme, life-threatening storm surge inundation” that will persist overnight and potentially on Thursday.

The storm swamped vehicles, stranded people in their homes and knocked out power to hundreds of thousands as it spread across southwest Florida late Wednesday morning and early afternoon. With the storm forecast to grind its way slowly up the peninsula, a two-day ordeal lay in store for Florida, with arduous rescue and recovery work following in its path.

A wind tower near Punta Gorda clocked sustained winds of 55 mph with a gust of 78 mph, the hurricane center said in a 9 p.m. update, while a station at Punta Gorda Airport measured a gust of 109 mph shortly before 8 p.m.

The forecast calls for Ian to remain intact as a hurricane as it crosses the state, a revised prediction that led the hurricane center to post hurricane watches and warnings on Florida’s central east coast, from Sebastian Inlet near Vero Beach to Flagler County.

“This is going to be a storm we talk about for years to come,” Ken Graham, director of the National Weather Service, said at a news conference Wednesday morning.

The hurricane was producing a storm surge that could reach 18 feet on Florida’s southwestern Gulf coast, generating devastating flooding that would submerge coastal neighborhoods, the National Hurricane Center said Wednesday morning.

The hurricane center raised storm surge estimates after the hurricane unexpectedly intensified to near Category 5 strength in the morning, with top winds of 155 mph.

The estimates called for a storm surge of 12-18 feet from Englewood and Charlotte Harbor to south of Fort Myers. A broader area, running from north of Englewood to north of Sarasota, could experience a storm surge of eight to 12 feet.

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 50 miles from the center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 175 miles. The storm is expected to bring up to 30 inches of rain to some areas.

Winds exceeding tropical-storm strength of 39 mph reached Florida by 3 a.m. Wednesday.

The center of Ian is forecast to move over central Florida Wednesday night and Thursday morning and emerge over the western Atlantic by late Thursday.

Gov. Ron DeSantis said in a news conference Wednesday evening that 911 calls to Lee, Hendry and Glades County call centers are being rerouted as their centers are down.

Ian spawned at least two tornadoes in Broward County on Tuesday night, the National Weather Service said. The tornadoes followed similar paths over Weston, Sunrise, Davie, Cooper City, Pembroke Pines and Hollywood, the weather service said.

A tornado near Kings Point Delray toppled trees, wrecked cars, damaged apartments, and displaced 35 people.

Expecting life-threatening flooding and facing uncertainty about the storm’s path, authorities ordered evacuations across a broad stretch of the coast. More than 2.5 million people are under evacuation orders in more than a dozen counties, Gov. Ron DeSantis had said.

As the storm track shifted to the southeast, the risk of high winds and excessive flooding increased in southeast Florida.

All of South Florida remains under a tropical storm warning, but the weather service said in its 6 p.m. report that Ian’s rain bands will start to slowly reduce late Wednesday night. Experts expect tropical-storm-force winds will subside in Palm Beach County some time Thursday afternoon and on Thursday morning in Broward County.

Palm Beach County saw peak sustained winds of 50 to 60 mph as of 5 p.m. Wednesday while Broward and Miami-Dade saw between 40 and 50 mph, the weather service report said. South Florida will remain under a flood watch through Thursday morning.

Despite the attention given to high winds, the biggest killer in hurricanes tends to be water. The hurricane center warned that the Gulf coast faces a high risk of storm surge, the rapid increase in sea level that can flood coastal neighborhoods.

Four to six inches of rain have fallen across southeastern Florida in the last 48 hours with some areas seeing between eight and nine inches, according to the weather service.

Florida Power & Light deployed 16,000 crew members at nearly two dozen staging, parking and prepositioning sites throughout the state, FPL president and CEO Eric Silagy said Tueday. They have already responded to outages triggered by storm bands in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, he said.

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Crews will continue to make repairs as needed until winds become unsafe, he said. During the most severe part of the storm, crews will likely remain sheltered for 12 to 20 hours.

FPL reported that 9,930 customers were without power in Broward County as of Wednesday night. In Miami-Dade County, 19,710 customers were without power and 18,080 in Palm Beach County.

Over 1.4 million power outages were reported across the state, the Florida Division of Emergency Management said in a Tweet Wednesday night.

DeSantis said that many parts of the state are likely to lose power.

“We’ve said from the beginning people are going to lose power, and you need to be prepared for that. And it’s not going to be something that’s going to automatically just go back on very quickly because you’re going to have extensive damage, and you’re going to have to have crews be able to get in, roads are going to have to be cleared,” the governor said.

The National Hurricane Center’s latest advisory said the Florida east and southeast Florida will see between 6 and 8 inches of rain with as much as 12 inches in some areas. Central and northeast Florida could see between 12 and 18 inches, with a maximum of 24 inches in some areas.

DeSantis said at a Wednesday news conference that officials are expecting major flooding in northeast Florida.

A new tropical depression formed Wednesday morning, but it’s far out in the Atlantic and expected to be short-lived, the hurricane center said Wednesday morning.

The next named storm to form would be Julia.

Hurricane season ends Nov. 30.

Staff writers Ron Hurtibise, David Lyons, Rafael Olmeda, Lois Solomon and Scott Travis contributed to this report. Information from the Associated Press was also used.