Welcome to the beat. I am Ari Melburgh, and we are tracking Hurricane Ian. We have been listening

to this press conference from Ron DeSantis. This storm is the fifth most powerful estimated to ever

hit the United States, a category four hurricane. It made landfall formerly three hours ago

in southwest Florida, lashing the Gulf Coast, life-threatening, storm surge level flooding.

They expect, as you have heard, up to 18 feet of flooding in some areas.

You're looking here now at Naples, where you can see the storm surge, $1 million without power.

Another video also from Naples, Florida, where you see the refrigerator floating

in the middle of a parking lot tossed around by waves. And here is a satellite image of

Ian making landfall. What you can appreciate here, we're told by the experts, is that the storm

from this perspective, you can see more clearly that it runs in its width

about 500 miles at certain points. That is formally wider, a larger area than the entire state

that it is currently pummeling. And then there's Fort Myers where the roads have been

impassable. You see the devastation. You see how difficult that would be to be anywhere near. NBC's

Kerry Sanders was actually in the storm as the eye was making landfall.

There's the wind speed as I'm standing next to a building, which is somewhat protecting me.

Okay, so I'll take a knee.

Whoops, if I can take a knee here.

There we go.

Let me just listen to this for a second.

Okay, you guys got it. I'm going back up. This is really strong. You get the idea. That's power. That's Mother Nature.

That is the power of Mother Nature. And that is what citizens have been urged to evacuate for. The journalists you see have safety techniques,

as well as backup to try to deal with covering this safely.

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