Power outages top 2 million as Category 1 storm heads inland

After Ian is forecast to exit Florida’s east coast late Thursday, it is expected to enter the Atlantic Ocean before heading north into South Carolina, making a second landfall Friday afternoon.

The National Hurricane Center does not forecast that Ian would re-intensify while passing over water. But it may not lose much strength either, potentially coming ashore near Charleston, S.C., as a strong tropical storm with 60 mph winds.

Tropical storm warnings are in effect for the coasts of Georgia, South Carolina and southern North Carolina, as well as hurricane watches, because Ian could be close to hurricane strength when it comes ashore again. These coastlines are also under storm surge watches.

Hurricane Ian’s fierce winds eased as it moved over the Florida Peninsula, but its torrential rains continue and are the source of major flooding concerns into Thursday.

The National Hurricane Center reported at 11 p.m. that Ian’s peak winds were down to 90 mph, making it a Category 1 hurricane. The hurricane center projects additional weakening overnight and for Ian to be a tropical storm by morning, with 65 mph winds.

Despite the decrease in winds, flooding from extreme rainfall that spreads northeast over time is still anticipated.

Officials on Wednesday warned Floridians of potential hazards in coming days, as some local authorities fear their communities will wake to the true devastation of the storm.

“We are beginning to get a sense that our community has been, in some respects, decimated,” Lee County Manager Roger Desjarlais said in a news conference. More than 750,000 people live in the county.

Lee is one of many counties that ordered mandatory evacuations ahead of the storm and are now fielding calls from people whose homes were flooded when the storm surge swept through communities on Wednesday.

Areas that endure a direct hit from a major hurricane face two waves of extreme weather, with an eerie pause in between. This is because a hurricane’s calm eye is surrounded by the eyewall, a ring of destructive winds.

Any location that experiences the eye of storm faces a blast of violent winds before and after.

Storm chasers and field reporters who witnessed both the front and back sides of Ian said the back side was particularly fierce.

“We were in the eye wall of Cat. 4 #Hurricane #Ian for over 5 hours and the back side was the worst,” tweeted the Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel. “I haven’t experienced anything close to this in over 30 years.”

As Hurricane Ian moved inland Wednesday night, its strongest sustained winds weakened to 100 mph — diminished from a monstrous landfall, but still a dangerous Category 2 storm.

But Floridians were warned not to let down their guard. The National Hurricane Center said Ian remained capable of “catastrophic storm surge, winds, and flooding" as it moves across the state toward the northeast at 8 mph.

Winds remained rather gusty even as the storm’s core moved inland. Just before 10 p.m., St. Petersburg recorded a gust of 51 mph while Melbourne Beach clocked a 58 mph gust.

Over 2 million customers in Florida were without power as of 10:15 p.m. local time on Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us, as Hurricane Ian continued to batter the state’s western coast.

Power was almost entirely lost in DeSoto and Charlotte counties, according to the site, which tracks outages across the state, and large swaths of the population generally lost power across counties in the southwest.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis warned the public on Twitter late Wednesday to keep generators “20 feet outside” of their homes.

As Hurricane Ian neared on Monday, employees of a Clearwater, Fla., marketing firm gathered in a conference room to watch their CEO on a large screen.

Hurricane Ian, then a category 1 storm that was expected to grow, was a “nothing burger” that was overplayed by the media, said PostcardMania CEO Joy Gendusa, who addressed workers remotely from the passenger seat of a car. Then, she asked those who were afraid of the storm to raise their hands.

“It’s not going to be that bad,” Gendusa said in a video recording of the meeting obtained by The Washington Post.

More than 2.5 million Floridians were put under evacuation orders or warnings earlier this week, but Terri Dunn Phillips, a retired teacher who has lived in the Tampa Bay area for more than 35 years, decided to beat the traffic and evacuate with her husband early Sunday.

“We always leave as soon as possible, after the direction and certainty of landfall is determined,” she said.

To her, fleeing hurricanes are second nature: Just as she has done at least six times over the past two decades, she dragged her backyard furniture and plants inside before packing her dog and two cats into the car. Then she drove roughly four hours to her daughter’s apartment in Jacksonville.