THOMASVILLE- Thomas County Emergency Services Division held an Emergency Weather briefing on Tuesday morning, where they updated city, county and school officials on the latest development of Hurricane Ian. 

The Category 3 storm made landfall in western Cuba early Tuesday morning. It is now churning toward Florida with winds approximately 125 miles per hour. Since landfall, the storm’s eye has now settled back over the Gulf of Mexico. Despite its path still not being exact, forecasters have it moving eastward. 

The morning briefing was led by the National Weather Service-Tallahassee, who informed the crowd that winds from Ian could be felt by mid-day Wednesday in outer-lying areas and Wednesday evenings for inland areas. 

“If we get a little bit more deviation to the east, it may not be until early Thursday before we feel tropical conditions,” they explained. 

While winds are to be expected, hurricane-force winds only have a one in ten chance of impacting the Southwest Georgia area. 

The National Weather Service continued to state how track-dependent the storm is. 

“The further east it moves, the less likely we are to see heavy rainfall on the western side,” they said. 

However, the National Weather Service does predict Hurricane Ian to continue to gain intensity and become a Category 4 storm at some point, so they will continue to monitor the rainfall and issue local flash flood warnings for areas impacted. 

Fire Chief and EMA Director Chris Jones said as of Monday, Thomasville and Thomas County have confirmed that should there be a need for a shelter, New Covenant will be the first choice. 

“We talked with Pastor David this morning, so he is just waiting to see what the outcome and the needs are,” Jones said. 

Jones went on to say that they are currently coordinating with the Department of Public Health and Red Cross to create a shelter locally after the hurricane, if necessary. 

Jones does anticipate an influx of traffic as residents of Tampa and St. Petersburg continue to evacuate. The airports in both Tampa and St. Petersburg closed Tuesday, so the Thomas County Sheriff’s Office and TPD will be conducting a traffic count later in the week. 

Jones asked representatives from Thomas County, City of Thomasville and Brookwood schools what their intentions were for Friday operations. 

At this time, they still have no cancellation plans, but both Thomasville and Thomas County Central have moved their football games to Wednesday night. 

Jones then allowed questions to be fielded from other organizations. 

City of Thomasville’s Utilities Department was asked what type of power outages they are expecting, based on the current model’s forecast. 

They said they are expecting moderate outages, based on what they typically see with normal afternoon thunderstorms. 

“If it shifts further east, we may be perfectly fine, but if it comes right over us, we could be looking at 2-3 days of work,” they said. 

This concluded the meeting, with another one to be held at 9:30 a.m. on Wednesday morning.