By Brad Brooks and Brendan O’Brien VENICE, Fla. (Reuters) -Hurricane Ian plowed into Florida’s Gulf Coast with catastrophic force on Wednesday, assaulting the state with howling winds, torrential rain and a treacherous surge of ocean surf that made it one of the most powerful storms on record to hit the United States. Ian made landfall in Cayo Costa as a Category 4 hurricane, with sustained winds of up to 150 miles per hour (241 km per hour), the U.S. National Hurricane Center (NHC) reported. The storm’s wind speeds put it just shy of a Category 5 designation on the Saffir-Simpson scale, the m…