Houses floating away, palm trees battered about and other mayhem from Hurricane Ian — The devastation being wrought by this nearly category 4 storm as it hit Florida is being recorded, and broadcast on social media, in real time.
Here are some of the most jarring videos we’ve come across since Ian slammed into Florida’s Gulf Coast.
Scenes like the one below tweeted by The Weather Channel’s Mike Seidel were typical. This was in the eyewall, site of the heaviest rainfall and most damaging winds.
Video from Fort Myers Beach showed houses floating away.
There were some ominous-looking shots of the bare bay in Tampa as Ian sucked all the water out and up.
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It was almost guaranteed to be redelivered as a storm surge once the wind changed, meteorologists said.
Before Ian even formally hit land, the storm surge was already moving in, as this footage from EarthCam showed. Commenters were quick to point out that people should in fact never ever gather on a pier while a hurricane is bearing down.
The only thing dumber than standing on a pier in a hurricane is … getting into the water?
This footage condensed from a streetcam showed the speed that the storm moved in with. Commenters who knew the area said it was more than a mile inland.
This footage of the Skyway Bridge in Tampa said it all.
“I literally couldn’t stand against the wind,” Venice resident Mark Pritchett told The Associated Press via text, not long after the hurricane came ashore about 35 miles south of him, near the protected barrier island of Cayo Costa just west of Fort Myers. “Rain shooting like needles. My street is a river. Limbs and trees down. And the worst is yet to come.”
With News Wire Services