Hurricane Ian rushes into Florida, "catastrophic" consequences expected

Ian is expected to cause "catastrophic sea flooding, gales, and flooding across the Florida Peninsula," the National Hurricane Center (NHC) said in its latest bulletin.

Carrying sustained winds of up to 250 km / h and even "higher" gusts, Ian is heading for the west coast of Florida where he is expected in the early afternoon local time. The hurricane should then “move over land” during the day, and “emerge over the western Atlantic by Thursday evening”.

Between 30 and 45 cm of precipitation is expected in central and northeast Florida, and up to 60 cm in some places, according to the NHC.

"This is a major storm," Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said Wednesday morning at a news conference, warning that Ian could make landfall as a Category 5 hurricane, the highest category on the Saffir-Simpson scale.

"Clearly this is a very powerful hurricane that will have far-reaching consequences," he said.

Evacuation orders were given overnight for a dozen counties on the coast, and according to Ron DeSantis these were generally followed in these very sensitive areas, "but perhaps not by everyone".

Warning that the day was going to be "very, very difficult", the governor asked people not to go outside when the eye of the hurricane passed.

"There is actually a calm when the center of the hurricane is above you. Do you think the storm has passed? It has not. It is still very dangerous."

- "Devastating" -

On Tuesday, Joe Biden also warned that Ian "could be a very violent hurricane, the impact of which would be devastating and put lives at risk".

The US president has already approved federal emergency aid for 24 of Florida's 67 counties.

“The closer he gets, the more obviously the anxiety rises with the unknown,” observed Chelsea Thompson, 30, who was helping her parents secure their home Tuesday in an evacuation zone southwest of Tampa.

Activity is halted in areas where the hurricane is expected. Tampa airport, for example, suspended its operations late Tuesday afternoon.

According to the Pentagon, 3,000 National Guard men are mobilized in Florida, with 1,800 others on the way.

NASA had given up on Tuesday's planned take-off of its new mega-rocket for the Moon, from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

Hurricane Ian, then in category 3, had previously hit Cuba on Tuesday, devastating the west of the country for five hours before heading towards the Gulf of Mexico, according to the Cuban meteorological institute Insmet.

Two people were killed in the western province of Pinar del Rio according to Cuban state media and the island was plunged into complete darkness.

The country of 11.2 million people is "without electric service", tweeted the state electricity company Union Eléctrica.

As the surface of the oceans warms, the frequency of the most intense hurricanes, with stronger winds and greater precipitation, increases, but not the total number of hurricanes.

Hurricanes are also spreading in areas hitherto spared. According to the IPCC (August 2021 report), the proportion of particularly intense hurricanes (category 4 and 5) should thus increase by 10% compared to the pre-industrial era with a warming of 1.5°C, 13% at 2°C and 30% at 4°C.

In particular, they pose an increasing risk to coastal communities who are victims of wave-submersion phenomena (also called marine submersion) amplified by the rise in the level of the oceans, which cause flooding and salt contamination of land and water. pure water.

Due to rising sea levels and marine flooding phenomena, more than a billion people will live in coastal cities at risk by 2050, according to the IPCC.