Hurricane Ian is expected to upgrade to a Category 4 sometime in the next couple of days.
Hurricane Ian has been upgraded to a Category 2 system overnight as it makes its way towards Florida’s west coast.
The storm was upgraded to a Hurricane on Monday afternoon with winds and rain increasing over night to become a Category 2.
At the moment, Ian is travelling in Mexico’s eastern gulf and is set to pass over Cuba as a Category 3 Hurricane around 4:00pm local time according to Zoom Earth.
#Ian is now a Category 2 Hurricane with maximum winds of 100 mph.
Latest track → https://t.co/CMYwPI8KAt #HurricaneIan pic.twitter.com/9bnOrLEJNb
— Zoom Earth (@zoom_earth) September 26, 2022
Winds up to 195km/h plus heavy rain, flash flooding and mudslides are expected to hit much of western Cuba before it moves on towards Tampa on Florida’s west coast where it’s believed it could cause serious damage.
Tomorrow morning Ian is expected to be updated to a Category 4 and will remain so for a couple of days where 220 km/h winds are predicted to hit from Fort Myers to the Tampa Bay region.
Hillsborough County in the Tampa region declared an official evacuation order for more than 300,000 residents on Monday morning with other areas including the Sarasota County warning locals to be prepared in case of evacuations.
“The last major hurricane that actually made a direct hit was 100 years ago,” said meteorologist Rick Davis of the National Weather Service’s Tampa office.
“So there’s a lot of people that have been brushed by hurricanes in the last five or 10 years in Florida.
“We tell people even if they’re lifelong Floridians like myself, this is something that we haven’t seen in our lifetime… So we definitely need to take it seriously.”
People are being warned to expect severe rain, heavy winds and flash flooding with prolonged river flooding predicted across central Florida.
Social media has been flooded with pictures and videos of people getting ready for Hurricane Ian.
Supermarket shelves have been stripped bare of essentials like water, canned food and long-life milk with most places putting a restriction on groceries.
Just wanna give a shoutout to all you Water Hoarders out there.🖕 It's Hurricane Panic Shopping Season. This Publix was out of water, just like Walmart and every other grocery store on The Spacecoast. #florida #hurricane #ian #hurricaneian #nftcommunity #nft #spacecoast pic.twitter.com/RtTtT93oX1
— Bitcoin.film ~ Search for Satoshi's Shadow Crew (@BitcoinsEarth) September 25, 2022
Others are also preparing their pets for a bad case scenario by writing their name and number on their pets belly, in case they get lost during the hurricane.
NASA has also been taking precautions with their Artemis Moon rocket, taking the Space Launch System (SLS) back to the engineering workshop to ensure it’s protected from the severe weather.
