Hurricane Ian: Florida braces for Category 4 system

Major Hurricane Ian is now a powerful Category 4 system, with wind speeds of up to 140mph as it approaches Florida.

Hurricane Ian is 24 hours away from a devastating Category 4 landfall in the south-west of Florida, likely between Tampa and Naples, bringing devastating winds, life-threatening storm surge, and catastrophic, widespread flooding.

On Tuesday night, September 27th, Ian underwent a full eyewall replacement cycle, which can be seen on the WeatherRadar below from 6pm onwards, EDT.

This is when a new, larger eye begins to form around the original eye of the hurricane, which usually results in a temporary weakening of the sustained winds.

However, when this occurs, the wind field of the system also expands, resulting in more widespread impacts. In Ian's case, its radius of maximum winds were reported to have grown by 50%. In the process, the hurricane delivered the third highest storm surge to Key West since 1913.

For size perspective, the entire hurricane force wind field of Hurricane Charley in 2004, would fit inside Ian’s eye.

Several tornadoes have also been reported within Hurricane Ian's outer bands of rain across south-west Florida, amidst a multitude of tornado watches and warnings.

A tornado in North Perry airport, Pembroke Pines, flipped several small, parked planes in its path.

It is likely that Hurricane Ian could join the retired hurricane name list, following twelve other "I" named storms; the highest number of any letter.

A storm name is retired by the WMO if it is considered so deadly or costly that the future use of its name on a different storm would be inappropriate and insensitive.