Florida - Thursday September 29, 2022: Around noon Thursday the central core of Tropical Storm Ian entered the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral.
Now that its back over warm waters again Acting National Hurricane Center Deputy Director Mike Brennan says it’s expected to regain hurricane strength. “We’re forecasting Ian to become a hurricane as it approaches the coast of South Carolina on Friday. We’ve now issued a Hurricane Warning for the entire coast of the state of South Carolina.”
But Ian is not done with Florida. Throughout Thursday it continued to dump heavy rains and caused flooding from Orlando to the St. Johns River. Florida.
"We've had flash flooding, in cases, catastrophic flash flooding across portions of central and east central Florida," said Brennan. "Heavy rainfall spreading up the northeast coast of Florida effecting places like Flagler Beach, St. Augustine, Jacksonville."
And, the on-shore flow of Ian is expected to thrash the northeast coast through Friday morning. “This onshore flow is pushing storm surge into portions of northeast Florida. A very rough another 12 to 18 hours for portions of the Florida northeast coast with tropical storm force winds, gusts to hurricane force, and life-threatening storm inundation of 3 to 5 feet.”
Thursday afternoon however, the National Weather Service lifted the Tropical Storm Warning for all of the Treasure Coast counties.
