Hurricane Ian upgrades to Category 4 as it reaches Florida

• Hurricane Ian strengthens into Category 4 storm as it heads toward Florida.
• Maximum sustained winds near 155 mph, with higher gusts, around 8 a.m. ET.
• Gov. Ron DeSantis warns residents it’s too late to evacuate Charlotte County, Florida.

Hurricane Ian strengthened to a Category 4 storm as it approached Florida on Wednesday, with the storm’s centre expected to make landfall on the state’s west coast as early as late morning or early afternoon.

Around 8 a.m. ET, maximum sustained winds were near 155 mph, with higher gusts. That is only 2 mph short of being upgraded to Category 5.

The National Hurricane Center has issued a warning of “life-threatening storm surge, catastrophic winds, and flooding in the Florida Peninsula,” with millions of people ordered to evacuate.

It is unclear where Ian will make landfall, but Gov. Ron DeSantis said early Wednesday that the forecast track showed it hitting Charlotte County, warning residents that it was too late to evacuate.

Meanwhile, residents across Cuba have been left without power as a result of Ian’s sweeping outages.

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