NWS surveys homes with 'catastrophic' storm surge damage near Fort Myers Beach

Rodney Wynn used a banana-yellow yard stick Tuesday to scrape debris off a mobile home on San Carlos Island near Fort Myers Beach.

A meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Ruskin, Wynn is a hurricane damage specialist and came to the area Tuesday to get a clearer view of what exactly happened during deadly Hurricane Ian.

The thin debris lines parallel to the still-standing rooftops were too high to reach with an outstretched hand, so Wynn used the yard stick to get to the 12-foot mark at one mobile home.

"I'm 6-foot and this (yard stick) is 5 feet, so you're looking at 11, 12 feet (of storm surge in that location)," Wynn said while using the yard stick to trace a thin line of debris just below the roof of one of the mobile homes that was still partially standing.

The storm damage is extensive in this part of Lee County, just to the mainland of Fort Myers Beach.

Damage on Fort Myers Beach is so bad only search-and-rescue crews and street cleaning crews are allowed on the island.

Wynn and others from the National Weather Service patrolled the islands and communities near Fort Myers Beach to get a sense of how much damage was done and how far the storm surge reached.

He used the yard stick again to check for water in the floor liners of some of the mobile homes. The liner moved as though it were a balloon full of water.

"That liner has insulation on top of it and other plastic liner and it's all full of water," Wynn said.

Even though Wynn was working on behalf of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, or NOAA, law enforcement would not allow the team on the island.

So they spent the day inspecting homes as close to Fort Myers Beach as possible.

The debris was so thick on San Carlos Island that it looked as though there had been a landfill there at some point.

A mud-sand combination was caked along the streets, with cracks resembling a desert floor. The occasional scent of a dead animal or rotting meat wafted in the air, along with the smell of diesel fuel, fish and low tide.

"I think it's crazy," Wynn said while stepping on metal roof sheeting that was crumbled and twisted.

The crew scoured San Carlos Island and the nearby neighborhoods, measuring inside empty homes and mobiles houses and taking notes about storm surge levels and intensity.

Dan Noah, also with NWS in Ruskin, said he was expecting more wind damage in the Fort Myers Beach area, but that he also hasn't had a chance to inspect the main island.

"The storm surge damage, some of it is catastrophic," Noah said as he surveyed the grounds. "The wind damage is actually less than I was expecting."

Noah said the measurements taken Tuesday will better help meteorologists and hurricane experts predict future storm impacts.

"Our team is documenting what we can and it will help us in the future when writing statements on how to prepare," Noah said. "The storm surge data will help with our forecasting in the future by fine tuning our model simulation. So everything we're gathering will go into helping us do better next time."

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Noah said he expects more wind damage in Cape Coral, where winds reached at least 140, according to at least one civilian weather station.

"You have to take that with a grain of salt because it not an official recording station, but it's better than estimating," Noah said. "And it may not have been at the peak spot, but maybe they caught it."

Noah compared Hurricane Ian to Hurricane Michael, two of the five strongest storms on record.

"It's the same catastrophic storm surge, it's just that Michael had higher wind speeds," Noah said. "(Michael) just leveled the canopy."

The NWS crew also was surveying damage in Cape Coral and Matlacha this week, Noah said.

Connect with this reporter: @ChadEugene on Twitter. 

This article originally appeared on Fort Myers News-Press: Hurricane experts call damage in Fort Myers Beach area 'catastrophic'