https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11250413/Ian-strengthens-Category-1-hurricane-nears-Cuba-NHC.html

Monstrous EIGHTEEN FOOT storm surge swallows Fort Myers
and leaves hundreds of families clinging to their rooftops:
Record-breaking Hurricane Ian leaves one million without
power and sends tsunami of flood water crashing up West Coast

Horrifying footage showed wave after wave smash the
small city of Fort Myers, swallowing buildings and cars

It sees the 'unsurvivable' torrent of water engulf palm trees
in the tropical resort and rip some from their roots

.. . .

Shit ! 18 FEET !!!

The Weather Channel was showing a public cam near a
Ft. Myers waterway - SUVs with only the roofs showing -
but it eventually cut out, well before peak surge.

The smaller city of Naples, south of FM, was also shown
suffering severe surge. Both were on the south side of
the eye - a prolonged onshore wind of well over 100 MPH.

Punta Gorda / Port Charlotte / Edgewater got the full
force of the northeast eye wall for six to eight hours.
Jim Cantori was almost killed a couple of times.reee

Fortunately, after Charlie about a decade ago, the houses
and infrastructure were built/rebuilt to a much more
stringent code. Most of the roofs - in the biz areas at
least - seemed to stay on. However Port Charlotte and
Edgewater are HUGE "bedroom" communities - VAST dense
subdivisions encompassing almost a 12x12 MILE area as
best I could measure from google maps.

Looking, I found something I'd only heard about somewhere
around 1970 ... the "Rotonda" community. It's large and
round. Somewhere around then the family was on vacation
down near Miami and someone handed dad a flyer. In reward
for sitting for a half-hour promo movie (no vids then)
you'd get a nice two-hour cruise on the waterway. Guess
who was the shill for "Rotonda" - ED McMAHON !!! The
modern logical circular community of the FUTURE !!!

BTW, the houses are packed into TINY lots ... you could
probably pour the neighbor a cuppa out your mutual
kitchen windows. The center ... now that's where everybody
stores their RVs and boats and crap.

Oh, Ft. Myers is BIG and DENSE - twice or three times as
big as Port Charlotte. An airport way out on the western
margin, 20 miles from the coast, was reporting 100+ winds.
There's gonna be a LOT of damage both to the city proper
and those massive 'burbs. West Florida is basically a
gigantic megapolis 150 miles long.

On the plus, the Tampa area got off relatively easy -
offshore winds with mostly cat1/cat2 gusts. Still lots
of electric grid problems, but the projected apocalypse
did not happen because the storm arrived a little south.

Power outages in Fla apparently now exceed 1.5 MILLION and
the storm is still in motion - likely towards NASA or maybe
the Melbourne area a little south. In the direct hit area,
it may be WEEKS before they can fix the grid. I heard that
crews are already arriving from distant states. Last kick-ass
on the east coast - the Frances/Jeanne double hit (3 weeks
apart, cat2+ and cat-3, arriving within a mile of the same
spot) crews from as far as CANADA were seen.

Update :

So far as I've heard ... the max surge in Ft. Myers
Florida was about 8 feet max. It's STILL a lot, STILL
a lot to do - as demonstrated - a shitload of damage.

But it wasn't 18 feet.

At some point they're gonna invent a "category 6"
storm class. THAT might produce 18 feet. We've
seen a few in the past decades that probably rate
cat-6 status, starting with Gilbert - with it's
unique double eye-wall - that smashed central
America. GW or what-ever ... storms THAT big
seem to be the new trend.

New coastal construction ... code for "bunker"
level. 200-MPH rating, and elevated at least
10 feet above average ground level. Concrete
with SS rebar and relatively thick steel
roofing. No more mobile homes, no more wood
and shingles. "Bunkers".