Video: Storm chaser Jim Cantore nearly blown away while reporting on Hurricane Ian

Jim Cantore, Weather Channel's famous meteorologist, Jim Cantore struggled to stand up and was even pulled to the ground once while reporting on Hurricane Ian on Wednesday.

In a video clip that is going viral, Cantore could be seen be pushed around by winds gusting up to 150 mph while he was delivering a report from a street in Florida not far from where the hurricane made landfall.

The hurricane wind pushed Cantore sideways on the street as he tried to keep his feet on the ground, and a flying branch pulled him down for a couple of seconds.


Cantore then struggled to make progress towards a street sign and held on to it for a while.

"Jim are you alright?" his cameraperson shouted above the storm.

"Alright! I'm fine, I'm fine. I just can’t stand up," the storm chaser could be heard replying.

Cantore, a broadcast meteorologist with Weather Channel since 1986, has reported live more than 100 tropical systems, including hurricanes Katrina, Harvey, Sandy, and Michael. If it's Jim Cantore out there, you can be sure it's a dangerous storm blowing.

Hurricane Ian plunged much of coastal southwest Florida into darkness with its catastrophic" storm surges, wind and flooding.

The eye of the "extremely dangerous" hurricane made landfall just after 1900 GMT on the barrier island of Cayo Costa, west of the city of Fort Myers.

TV footage from the coastal city of Naples showed floodwaters surging into beachfront homes, submerging roads and sweeping away vehicles.

Some neighborhoods in Fort Myers, which has a population of more than 80,000, resembled lakes.

The National Hurrican Centre said Ian was packing maximum sustained winds of 150 miles (240 kilometers) per hour when it landed.

It later weakened to a Category 1 hurricane with winds of 90 miles per hour, while still battering Florida with "storm surge, winds and flooding."