Hurricane Ian barrels toward Florida

Sarasota, Florida, mayor Erik Arroyo told CNN on Wednesday that the city is withdrawing its police officers from the streets because of the hazardous conditions

"We just made the decision just now to withdraw all of our police officers from the streets just because of the sustained wind pressure that we've been having," Arroyo said.

He encouraged everyone still in the city to "heed the governor's warning and stay hunkered down." 

"It is too late to evacuate at this point. So everybody in zone "A" and "B" will be feeling the effects of this hurricane first. They will be feeling the storm. And that is why we tried to evacuate them a while back," he said.

Arroyo said that the city has been preparing for Hurricane Ian since last week. "We saw the impact it could have," the mayor said.

"So at this point, all we have is ourselves as a community, so take care of your neighbors. Because we're in this together. And we'll make it through," he said.

Lee County, Florida, Manager Roger Desjarlais said the county, which includes Fort Myers, is now experiencing winds approaching hurricane force, as well as tidal surge coming on shore and waves washing over roads.

“We would expect to see more of that inland between now and 2 o'clock, 4 o'clock this afternoon,” Desjarlais said. 

Desjarlais noted that Hurricane Ian continues to be a very slow-moving storm.

“These effects are going to be with us for a while. We've probably got another 15 to 18 hours, maybe more, to deal with this storm,” he said.

Desjarlais said he received a call from Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Wednesday morning, and DeSantis’ chief financial officer told county officials that the state anticipates having insurance companies open within 72 hours of it being safe to do so and start to issue checks “as soon as possible.”

More than 330,000 customers are without power in Florida due to Hurricane Ian, according to PowerOutage.us.

The site reported that Lee County, home to Fort Myers and Cape Coral, has the most power outages with more than 100,000 customer affected.

In Collier County, which includes Naples and Marco Island, 66,000 customers lost power, according to the site.

Ian’s expected intensity as it crosses Florida has been increased and is now forecast to maintain more of its overall strength as it moves across the state, according to the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) 11 a.m. ET advisory. This will expose more people in the central and eastern portions of the state to damaging, hurricane-force winds.

“One important change is that Ian is likely to remain more intact as it crosses the Florida peninsula (due to both its stronger initial wind speed and its faster forecast forward speed), and this now increases the threat of hurricane-force winds on the east coast of Florida," it said.

With that in mind, the NHC has also added hurricane warnings to the east coast of Florida. Additionally, it also updated several watches and warnings for Florida up through South Carolina. 

This includes:

The city of Bradenton, Florida, said their waste water treatment plant is full “and is in danger of overflowing,” according to a post on Facebook. 

The city, located just south of St. Petersburg, is seeing the impacts of Category 4 Hurricane Ian. 

Bradenton is asking residents to conserve water. “Don't do dishes or laundry, flush only when necessary, limit showering,” the city said.

Storm surge is rising quickly along portions of Southwest Florida on Wednesday morning, with some locations already experiencing record-high water levels.

More than 5 feet of storm surge in Naples, Florida, has already risen water levels to more than four and a half feet of inundation, which is measured as the height of the sea level above normal highest tides.

The current level in Naples is already higher than the previous highest water level that came during Hurricane Irma in 2017, which was 4.02 feet above normal highest tides. Water levels in Naples have been measured since 1965.

Water levels are likely to continue to increase as both Ian makes landfall and the normal high tide time approaches around 2 p.m. ET today.

The water levels in Naples have risen about 6 feet in the last five hours. 

Waffle House has closed 21 of its locations in Florida that are in mandatory evacuation zones as of 11 a.m. ET Wednesday, according to Njeri Boss, the chain's vice president of public relations.

Waffle House has become the unofficial barometer of a storm's intensity.

The chain already announced Tuesday that it had closed 11 locations in mandatory evacuation zones in south Florida.

Ask anyone who lives in one of the 25 states in the US home to the roadside breakfast mecca, and it’s likely they’ve heard of the Waffle House Index. It’s the unofficial measure thought up by a former FEMA official to evaluate how severely a storm hit an area.

Read more here.

Manatee County officials will lock down shelters as Hurricane Ian makes its final approach to western Florida. 

In a video message on Facebook, county administrator Scott Hopes said, “If you're heading to a shelter, you need to get there quickly because in less than 30 minutes we're going to be locking down the shelters. … And people will be kept off the roads because it's no longer safe to travel.” 

“The three law enforcement agencies on our islands have already begun their evacuation,” he said. “Two of the law enforcement agencies from two of the cities have already evacuated the island and the third is on its way.” 

“This is only the beginning,” Hopes said. “When 150-mile-an-hour winds with gusts that exceed that rip through our community, it is going to cause extensive damage.”

As Hurricane Ian is set to make landfall in Florida, more than 2,000 US flights have now been canceled Wednesday, according to the flight tracking site FlightAware.

Another 1,600 flights have already been canceled for Thursday, a two-day total topping 3,600 flights. Airlines are canceling flights in order to ensure their aircraft and crews are in safe locations and customers aren’t stranded as Ian approaches Florida.

Airports in Orlando, Miami and Tampa are seeing the greatest number of cancellations. Tampa International airport is closed, and Orlando International is closed to all but emergency flights. Several other smaller airports in Florida are also closed.

American Airlines, which operates about 250 daily departures out of Miami — its fourth largest hub — has cancelled 583 flights, including mainline and regional service. It has waived change and cancellation fees.

Southwest Airlines tweeted that its employees are “working around the clock to track” Ian. It says the storm “is expected to cause continued disruptions.”