More than 100,000 people have watched Ryan Hall, a weather analyst known by his online name "Ryan Hall Y'all," live stream the latest news on the Category 4 Hurricane Ian as it bears down on Florida.
As the winds from Hurricane Ian arrive, debris litters a street.
For the past four hours, Hall has been live-streaming Hurricane Ian, offering meteorological predictions, split screen footage, and pictures of Florida, including from local storm chasers.
Hall, who has 1.5 million followers on TikTok, 600,000 on YouTube, and 100,000 on Facebook, has analyzed dozens of extreme weather events in the last few years, including a summer heat wave and a January snowstorm.
He picked up tens of thousands of views on his weather videos within a few months of launching his online accounts.
Hall didn't reply to a request from Forbes.
2.5 million people were forced to evacuate as Hurricane Ian made landfall as a Category 4 storm with 150 mph winds and an 18-foot storm surge. Only four Category 4 or 5 hurricanes have hit Florida in the last century, and the storm is the first major one to hit the area in nearly a century.
More than 600,000. The number of people who subscribe to Hall's channel. One of his most popular videos on the internet has over one million views.
Hall studied meteorology at Mississippi State University and worked for the weather center and as a part of the production crew at WYMT in eastern Kentucky. After discovering television weather reporting was not his calling, the 28-year-old decided to pursue other ventures and posted his first weather video in January of 2021. He created online weather videos at the age of 14 and launched a website that predicted school closings based on weather forecasts that generated thousands of views. A number of Hall's videos on TikTok analyzing and predicting Hurricane Ian's path have drawn more than 12 million views.
Since his career in online weather commentary began, Hall has pursued side ventures. According to his website, he is the owner of Hall Enterprises, a company that helps companies grow their business online.
There is a storm minutes away from landfall on Captiva island.
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