Hurricane Ian makes landfall in western Cuba

100
2
Hurricane Ian makes landfall in western Cuba

Hurricane Ian weakened into a major Category 3 storm early Tuesday morning, as it made landfall in western Cuba, U.S. officials said.

Landfall was southwest of the town of La Coloma in Pinar Del Ro province at around 4: 30 a.m. The National Hurricane Center said on Tuesday morning, with maximum sustained winds of 125 mph, the maximum sustained winds of maximum sustained winds of 125 mph.

In Florida, the governor. As a Category 4 hurricane, Ian could hit the state as a Category 4 hurricane, with wind speeds topping 130 mph, according to Ron DeSantis. Tampa Bay is expected to get a direct hit as soon as Wednesday.

That is going to cause a huge storm surge, DeSantis said. You're going to have a lot of different impacts. Hundreds of thousands of people were evacuated from Pinar del R o as authorities sent in emergency and medical personnel ahead of the storm's arrival this week, The Associated Press reported.

In Havana, fishermen hauled out their boats, city workers unclogged storm drains, and residents expressed alarm at the prospect of flooding, according to the AP.

Abel Rodrigues, 54, told the AP that we hope to escape this one, because it would be the end of us. We already have so little. On Monday, Ian passed by the nearby Cayman Islands with no major damage reported. Emergency officials issued an all clear notification at 3 p.m. local time, and Premier Wayne Panton said that the British territory was fortunate to have been spared the worst of a potentially very serious storm. As the storm headed for Florida, oil companies evacuated workers from deepwater platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, airports in Tampa and Pinellas County announced Tuesday they would close Tuesday, and American Airlines announced travel waivers for people flying into or out of 20 airports in Florida and the Caribbean.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers said the team was temporarily moving its operations to Miami-Dade County.

Residents on Florida's Gulf Coast stocked up on food and prepared with sandbags and plywood for their windows. Hundreds of thousands of people were under evacuation orders.

The storm is going to slow down, which means it could potentially sit on top of us for 47 hours, said Cathie Perkins, the director of Pinellas County Emergency Management, NBC affiliate WFLA of Tampa.

She said that a lot of rain is not going to be able to drain out quickly, so it is not going to be a lot of rain.