Hurricane Ian makes US landfall

Hurricane Ian intensified before making landfall along the southwestern coast of Florida as a high-end Category 4 storm yesterday afternoon, reaching maximum sustained winds of 155 MPH. It's tied for the fifth-most powerful hurricane ever to hit the continental US, per Colorado State University researcher Phil Klotzbach.

As of this morning, Ian had been downgraded to a tropical storm and is expected to weaken as it heads north towards Georgia and South Carolina – though it could still be near hurricane strength.

🌀 More deets… The Hurricane Center warned of storm surges as high as 18 feet across a 50-mile stretch of Floridian coast, a level on par with the highest surge events in US history, per Axios.

• The storm dropped 30 inches of rain in some areas of Florida yesterday, while parts of South Carolina and Georgia are expecting up to a foot of precipitation.
• Over 1.9 million Floridians were without power as of 9:30 ET last night, per PowerOutage.us.
• At least 3,500 flights were canceled across the US yesterday and today due to fallout from the storm, per data-tracker FlightAware.

😬 Zoom out: Early estimates show Hurricane Ian will likely cost the property-insurance industry between $20 billion and $40 billion in claims – though the total economic losses will be much higher, per the WSJ.