Florida Gulf Coast residents emptied grocery shelves, boarded up windows and fled to evacuation shelters as Hurricane Ian churned closer today.
The intense twister is now lashing the state's southern tip with tropical storm-force winds hours before it was forecast to make US landfall.
Ian, which pummelled Cuba on Tuesday as a Category 3 storm - leaving the entire nation without power and driving residents to shelters to wait out the raging weather.
