Hurricane Ian is bearing down on Florida as a category 4 storm. Video / AP
Terrifying footage of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Ian in the United States has swept social media - but among the heartbreak have come moments of inspiration.
Videos of animals being rescued from floodwaters have melted hearts online, gaining more than 1.6 million views.
"My boyfriend saving a cat fromflood waters near Bonita Beach," Megan Cruz Scavo wrote on Twitter.
The man is seen wading through raging floodwaters to gently rescue a terrified cat cowering on top of a perch beside a house, carrying the animal back over his shoulder.
"I'm bawling my eyes out," one user responded.
Another video shows a dog being recovered from a boat in Fort Myers.
With many fatalities feared in the US, 23 Cuban migrants are reportedly missing after the boat they were sailing in sank off the Florida Keys on Wednesday.
At least two people died when the storm went through Cuba on Tuesday.
A stoplight pole at Livingston St, blown down by Hurricane Ian winds, rests on Orange Avenue in downtown Orlando, Florida. Photo / Willie J. Allen Jr, Orlando Sentinel via AP
The category 4 strength storm made landfall at Cayo Costa, just north of the city of Fort Myers, on Wednesday at 3.05pm US time (5.05am Thursday, AEST). Winds of 241km/h were recorded as it hit.
If the winds had been just a few km/h stronger, it would have been a cat 5 storm.
Fort Myers, 200km south of Tampa, has a population of almost 800,000 people. Millions of Floridians have been in the storm's path.
'Catastrophic impacts'
After passing over western Cuba, Ian then tracked up to the west side of Florida into the Gulf of Mexico.
Earlier on Wednesday in Tampa Bay the water literally receded from the shoreline, sucked out by the hurricane. As the storm nears, all that water and more besides will surge back in potentially flooding the cities on the bay.
Here are a few pictures of the receding water at Venice. IMPORTANT NOTE: The water WILL come back. Please do not attempt to walk there or any other location with receding water. https://t.co/frMvkCrvBP
The US National Hurricane Centre didn't mince its words saying Ian would cause "catastrophic" storm surges, winds and flooding within the state.
That sentiment was echoed by Deanne Criswell from the Federal Emergency Management Agency.
"There is going to be catastrophic impacts, and not just where we're going to see the storm make landfall, but we're also really concerned about all of the inland flooding because it's bringing with it a lot of rain and it's going to move slowly," she told CNN.
'Not going to survive'
Michael Brennan, acting deputy director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, was even blunter as he warned of storm surges of up to 5m around the Fort Myers area.
"I'm six feet tall. That's almost three times my height," he said.
Firefighters in Orange County help people stranded by Hurricane Ian early Thursday. Photo / Orange County Fire Rescue's Public Information Office via AP
"It's not just the rise of the water from the storm surge, it's the breaking waves on top of it that are going to be driven by those 250km/h winds.
"Those waves can destroy buildings. That's not a situation you're going to survive in," said Brennan.
Ian's giant eye
Pictures of the eye of the storm have rattled forecasters. Usually the eye – the heart of the storm – is relatively small.
Not Ian.
Its eye is around 56km wide. Hurricane Charley, which hit Florida in 2004 and killed 10 people, had an eye of just 11km wide before it struck land.
Current size of #Ian's eye and eyewall, compared with Charley's in 2004 when it was in a similar location approaching the coast #flwxpic.twitter.com/E0V9MRVZ6w
While the eye itself is an area of relative calm, the eye wall that surrounds it is a ring of powerful thunderstorms and destructive winds. A large eyewall, as in Ian's case, means those devastating storms will take longer to pass.
Ian's eyewall underwent a "replacement" over the past 12 hours. That occurs when a larger wall of thunderstorms surrounds and replaces the earlier, smaller eyewall.
CCTV cameras in Fort Myers, mounted several metres off the ground, have been swamped with water.
While nearby to the south in the coastal city of Naples, a shark was seen swimming down a flooded suburban street.
Other footage showed houses being washed away in Naples.
Some 850,000 households are already without power.
Ian is expected to curve its way north through the state and then into the Atlantic. But it's possible it could then make landfall again around Georgia or South Carolina.
Airports in Tampa, Miami and Orlando have stopped commercial flights.
Disney World has asked all hotel guests to shelter in place and said its theme parks and water parks would be temporarily closed on Wednesday and Thursday.
And American diner chain Waffle House is shuttering multiple locations across the state.
The beloved restaurant franchise is known for staying open even during severe weather, Fox News reports.
The decision to close ahead of the hurricane's landfall has been seen as a bad omen under the so-called Waffle House Index.
On Tuesday, Ian plunged all of Cuba into darkness after battering the country's west as a Category 3 for more than five hours before moving back out over the Gulf of Mexico.
The damaged Sanibel Causeway that connects Fort Myers to the island community in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. Photo / Joe Cavaretta, /South Florida Sun-Sentinel via AP
The storm damaged Cuba's power network and left the island "without electrical service," state electricity company Union Electrica said.
Only the few people with gasoline-powered generators had electricity on the island of more than 11 million people.
In the US, the Pentagon said 3200 national guardsmen were called up in Florida, with another 1800 on the way.
