Hurricane Ian latest updates: 2 million in Florida lose power as storm weakens to category 2 – live

The storm has left more than 2 million people without power, according to Poweroutage.us. The site shows that in Charlotte and DeSoto counties nearly all households were without electricity, while Sarasota and Lee counties were also hard hit.

In Charlotte county, just north of Fort Myers, the sheriff’s office has imposed a curfew from 9pm-6am, while in Lee county all residents have been told to boil water for at least one minute before drinking.

Ian now a Category 2 storm

Hours after making landfall, Hurricane Ian’s top sustained winds had dropped to 105 mph (170 km/h), making it a Category 2 storm, AP reports.

Ian is expected to weaken further to a tropical storm as it marches inland at about 9 mph (14 km/h). Still, storm surges as high as 6 feet (2 meters) were expected on the opposite side of the state, in north-east Florida. More than 2 million people are now without power, according to Poweroutage.us.

Satellite imagery shows Ian’s progress

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has tweeted this footage of Ian’s devastating arrival on the Florida coast.

Here’s the evening update on how Florida residents are enduring Hurricane Ian, one of the most powerful storms ever recorded in the US.

• In coastal Florida, desperate people posted to Facebook and other social sites, pleading for rescue for themselves or loved ones, the Associated Press reported. Some video showed debris-covered water sloshing toward homes’ eaves. A coastal sheriff’s office reported that it was getting many calls from people trapped in flooded homes.

• An estimated 1.9 million customers in Florida were without electricity, according to PowerOutage.us.

• Seven people had survived after a boat carrying migrants from Cuba sank near the Florida Keys, officials said, but rescue crews were still searching for an additional twenty people, the Associated Press reported.

• A Weather Channel meteorologist who has covered more than 90 storms in his career said that he had experienced nothing like Hurricane Ian in over 30 years.

• The governors of Virginia, Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina all preemptively declared states of emergency, the Associated Press reported. Forecasters predicted Ian will turn toward those states as a tropical storm, likely dumping more flooding rains into the weekend, after crossing Florida.

My colleagues in Australia will be picking up live coverage for the next few hours, so you can continue to follow along here.

Fort Myers TV station meteorologist live tweets: ‘Worst hurricane I’ve ever been in’

For the past few hours, journalists at Fort Myers television station WINK have been documenting water flooding into their newsroom building, and their efforts to keep working while staying safe on the second floor of the building.

The water has started to recede, the station’s meteorologist tweeted, but the city is “pitch dark” and the wind is “unbelievably strong”.

The dramatic footage from earlier in the day:

Measuring Hurricane Ian’s ‘Waffle House Index’

There are many ways to rank the severity of storms in the United States, but one of the favorite measures is the “Waffle House Index,” a measurement of how many of the hardy, reliably open restaurant chain locations have chosen to close in the face of extreme weather.

The Wall Street Journal put Ian’s Waffle House Index at 21 closures.

And on the ground in Florida yesterday, meteorologists knew how to interpret the signs:

Time lapse footage of a storm surge in Fort Myers Beach

A journalist at a TV station in Michigan used footage from a webcam to capture the storm surge in Fort Myers Beach, Florida.

Meteorologist who has covered 90+ storms says Ian may be the worst

Meteorologist Mike Seidel has worked for the Weather Channel for decades, personally covering more than 90 storms.

He shared dramatic video of Hurricane Ian this evening, writing, “I haven’t experienced anything close to this in over 30 years.”

Update: three Cuban migrants rescued after boat sinks off Key West, 20 more missing

Three Cubans migrants were rescued from the ocean after their boat sank Wednesday, shortly before Hurricane Ian made landfall in south-western Florida. But officials said that 20 more people from the boat might be missing, the Associated Press reported.

Four Cubans reached Stock Island, just east of Key West, and reported their vessel sank because of inclement weather, US Customs and Border Protection chief patrol agent Walter N Slosar said in a post on Twitter.

The US Coast Guard initiated a search for 23 people and managed to find three more survivors about 2 miles (3 km) south of the island chain, officials said.

Air crews continued to search for the remaining people.

“Terrifying … and the worst is yet to come.”

The reports coming in from Florida residents experiencing Hurricane Ian are striking. From the Associated Press:

Mark Pritchett stepped outside his home in Venice around the time the hurricane churned ashore from the Gulf of Mexico, about 35 miles (56 kilometers) to the south. He called it “terrifying.”

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

Some residents have chosen to stay in their homes, including Jared Lewis, a Tampa delivery driver, who told the Associated Press that his home has withstood hurricanes in the past, though not as powerful as Ian.

“It is kind of scary, makes you a bit anxious,” Lewis said. “After the last year of not having any, now you go to a category 4 or 5. We are more used to the 2s and 3s.”

As a category 4 storm slams the coast of Florida, nearly every home and business in three counties was without power, the Associated Press reports:

• In all, more than 1.8m Florida homes and businesses were without electricity.

• In Naples, the first floor of a fire station was inundated with about 3 ft (1 meter) of water and firefighters worked to salvage gear from a firetruck stuck outside the garage in even deeper water, a video posted by the Naples fire department showed.

• News anchors at Fort Myers television station WINK had to abandon their usual desk and continue storm coverage from another location in their newsroom because water was pushing into their building.

• Flash floods were possible all across Florida. Hazards include the polluted leftovers of Florida’s phosphate fertilizer mining industry, more than 1 bn tons of slightly radioactive waste contained in enormous ponds that could overflow in heavy rains.

Ian’s strength at landfall tied it for the fifth-strongest hurricane when measured by wind speed to strike the US. Among the other storms was Hurricane Charley, which hit nearly the same spot on Florida’s coast in August 2004, killing 10 people and inflicting $14bn in damage.

Sheriff’s office chooses not to evacuate downtown Fort Myers jail: report

This is Lois Beckett, picking up our live coverage of Hurricane Ian, from our West Coast bureau in Los Angeles.

The jail in downtown Fort Myers is in a mandatory evacuation zone, but the local sheriff decided not to evacuate the jail, leaving an unknown number of people incarcerated there during the storm, the Miami New Times reports.

A spokesperson for Lee county sheriff Carmine Marceno told the Miami New Times that “in the event of an emergency, we have procedures in place”, and that the people incarcerated in the jail were safe. The spokesperson declined to tell the paper how many inmates were currently in the facility.

The sheriff’s office did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Meteorologists in Florida are facing dangerous conditions reporting from the field, prompting criticism of broadcasters for putting employees in harm’s way.

The National Weather Service and local authorities have advised residents to remain sheltered – away from hazards including falling tree branches and power lines.