Hurricane Ian is so powerful that its winds were just 2 mph shy of becoming a Category 5 storm as it approached landfall in Florida on Wednesday. And it didn't take long for it to unleash its wrath on Florida's power grids.
Ian's eye began moving onshore at Sanibel and Captiva islands by midday on Wednesday. Before 2:30 p.m. ET, more than 640,000 people had their power knocked out, according to tracking on poweroutage.us. Southwest Florida has so far bore the brunt of the impact, with Lee County — home to Fort Myers — reporting more than 226,000 outages, affecting nearly 50% of its tracked customers.
Neighboring Collier County had more than 99,000 outages reported at the same time.
Reports of outages continue to extend north along the Gulf Coast, with major disruptions going as far north as Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. Some areas along Florida's east coast are also seeing outages, with more than 29,000 reported in Miami-Dade.
This is a developing story.
- In:
- Hurricane Ian
- Florida
- Hurricane
- Power Outage
Li Cohen is a social media producer and trending reporter for CBS News, focusing on social justice issues.
Thanks for reading CBS NEWS.
Create your free account or log in
for more features.
