Hurricane Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm Thursday, but it still brings the threat of more surge and floods, forecasters said.
As of 5 a.m., it was 50 miles southeast of Orlando with top winds of 65 mph, down from its 155-mph peak Wednesday. It was moving northeast at 8 mph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Ian is forecast to pass over the Titusville area and over 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.
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.
“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.
[ RELATED: South Florida coping with flooding and intense bands of rain from Hurricane Ian ]
The hurricane produced a storm surge on Florida’s southwestern Gulf coast that generated devastating flooding that inundated coastal neighborhoods.
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.
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.
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.
[ RELATED: Hurricane Ian expected to dump up to 10 inches of rain in parts of South Florida ]
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 Tuesday. They have already responded to outages triggered by storm bands in Broward and Miami-Dade counties, he said.
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.
[ RELATED: ‘It could be life-changing.’ Tampa Bay preps for Hurricane Ian’s worst, hopes for the best ]
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.
[ STAY UPDATED with the latest forecast for tropical weather at SunSentinel.com/hurricane ]
Central and northeast Florida could see between 12 and 18 inches of rain, 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.
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.
