Hurricane Ian was downgraded to a tropical storm early Thursday morning as it traversed northeastward across central Florida, dumping torrential rain while still packing strong winds across a large swath of the state.
The former Category 4 hurricane made landfall Wednesday afternoon west of Fort Myers near Cayo Costa. Ian unleashed widespread life-threatening storm surge flooding across the region.
About 2.6 million homes and businesses are without power, according to PowerOutage.us. The most significant number of outages are based in the southwest Florida region, where the hurricane made landfall.
Shocking footage yesterday revealed the surge sent a wall of water roaring inland that was as high as some homes. Streets were instantly transformed into rivers. We pointed out last night that total storm damage could be upwards of $70 billion.