Thankfully, not all of Florida was hit as hard as the Southwest coast. The heavily populated communities clustered about the Interstate-4 corridor fromTampa andOrlando toDaytona Beach (including Pasco and Polk counties) and encompassing Lakeland, Winter Haven, Auburndale, Bartow, LakeWales, Kissimmee and Orlando were all hit with heavy rains, flooding and extensive property damage, but the impacts were far less acute than those in Lee, Charlotte and Sarasota coastal areas. And the heavily populated Atlantic Coast communities from Palm Beach County down through Broward and Miami-Dade (Boca Raton, Fort Lauderdale, Hollywood, Hallandale andMiami) experienced nothing but a blustery, rainy summer day – routine for September. After crossing the western tip of Cuba on a northward track to the densely populated Tampa Bay/St. Petersburg area, Hurricane Ian did what tropical storms often do – it changed course, turned sharply right and charged ashore at one the most vulnerable strips of Florida’s 1,350-mile coastline: the low-lying waterfront communities between Sarasota and Naples. Generating core wind speeds of 150 miles per hour, tidal surges of more than seven feet and 10 inches of rain, Ian made landfall at 2.24 p.m. on September 28 at tiny Cayo Costa island, then tore into Port Charlotte, Punta Gorda, Cape Coral, Sanibel, Fort Myers, Pine Island and surrounding communities – levelling homes and businesses, uprooting trees, reducing pleasure boats to scrap heaps, ripping roofs off of houses and trapping families in flood waters that backed up into Charlotte Harbor, the Caloosahatchee River, Estero Bay and inland tributaries, ultimately claiming more than 100 lives. Once past landfall and free of the warmGulf waters, wind speeds at Ian’s core and beyond moderated as it continued on its north-easterly path through DeSoto, Hardee, Highland, Okeechobee, Osceola and Brevard counties… finally exiting just south of Cape Canaveral on the Atlantic shore, by which time its wind intensity dropped to 55 mph – still enough to knock you off your feet or take out full-grown trees. At one point, U.S. Weather Service satellites recorded Ian’s storm core winds, rains and trailing clouds at almost 500 miles across, covering most of the state except for Florida’s northwest Panhandle. Special Report Florida Bends to Hurricane Ian But Doesn’t Break By Milan Korcok Sunseeker Resort Port Charlotte Photos: iStock.com/felixmizioznikov 18 | www.snowbirds.org
RkJQdWJsaXNoZXIy MzMzNzMx