Hurricane Milton brought powerful winds, a deadly storm surge and flooding to much of Florida after making landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm.
It weakened to a Category 1 storm as it moved through Florida early Thursday, heading into the Atlantic. At 8am Milton is packing 85 mph sustained winds, located 75 miles ENE of Cape Canaveral. Power outages were widespread and deaths have been reported from severe weather.
The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph when it roared ashore in Siesta Key, south of the Tampa Bay region, the National Hurricane Center said. The hurricane was bringing deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St.
Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
AP/Rebecca Blackwell
Here’s the latest:
Rescue teams move people to safety in the Tampa area and work to reopen roadways
TAMPA — The Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office has started rescue operations in at least one neighborhood.
“Our teams are on the ground, moving people to safety,” the sheriff’s office said on Facebook.
Sheriff Chad Chronister said in a post that crews have been responding to calls since early Thursday.
“Our cut teams are out cutting trees, trying to open up some of the roadways. There are downed powerlines and trees everywhere. Please stay indoors. We’ll let you know when it’s safe to come out,” he said.
Officials in hard-hit Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, also are urging residents to stay where they are.
Travel is dangerous after Milton moves through, sheriff's office warns
SARASOTA — In Sarasota County, “first-in” emergency crews were reporting downed power lines and trees in roadways, the Sarasota County Sheriff’s Office said in a social media post early Thursday.
Some bridges in the county were not passable after Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, a barrier island off Sarasota. The sheriff’s office urged residents and business owners to stay off the roads to allow emergency and utility crews time to work.
“The storm may have passed but it is still dangerous to be traveling this morning,” the sheriff’s office said.
Milton moving off the east coast of Florida
The center of Hurricane Milton was moving off the east coast of Florida early Thursday with maximum sustained winds of 85 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. Milton was expected to continue to move away from the peninsula and to the north of the Bahamas.
As the storm barreled northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, all hurricane and tropical storm warnings were discontinued for the state’s west coast.
Storm surge warnings remained in effect for parts of the Florida west coast, and along the state’s east coast to Altamaha Sound, Georgia. Hurricane and tropical storm warnings were also in effect for much of the state’s east-central coast.
At least 3.2 million customers without power due to Milton
Hurricane Milton’s tear of destruction across central Florida left more than 3.2 million homes and businesses without power around 6 a.m. EDT Thursday, according to PowerOutages.us.
Energy companies serve more than 11.5 million customer accounts across the state, according to the website.
Milton’s high winds and intense rains continued into Thursday morning. Florida's central Gulf Coast was hardest hit by the outages, including Hardee, Sarasota, Hillsborough and Manatee counties.
Hurricane Milton spawns multiple tornadoes across Florida
MIAMI — Multiple tornadoes spawned by the hurricane tore across Florida, the twisters acting as a dangerous harbingers of Milton’s approach.
Three Florida offices of the National Weather Service in Miami, Tampa and Melbourne issued more than 130 tornado warnings associated with Hurricane Milton by Wednesday evening.
Videos posted to Reddit and other social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighborhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.
Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said he wasn’t sure whether Milton had spawned a record number of tornados, but he pointed out that only 64 Florida tornado warnings were associated with Hurricane Ian, which hit the Tampa Bay area as a massive storm in 2022.
Tornadoes produced by hurricanes and tropical storms most often occur in the right-front quadrant of the storm, but sometimes they can also take place near the storm’s eyewall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The heat and humidity present in the atmosphere during such storms and changes in wind direction or speed with height, known as wind shear, contribute to their likelihood.
What does it mean for a storm to make landfall?
MIAMI — The U.S. National Hurricane Center considers official landfall to be when the exact center of a tropical cyclone meets a coastline. But that doesn’t mean it’s also when the storm’s strongest winds hit.
“Because the strongest winds in a tropical cyclone are not located precisely at the center, it is possible for a cyclone’s strongest winds to be experienced over land even if landfall does not occur. Similarly, it is possible for a tropical cyclone to make landfall and have its strongest winds remain over the water,” the center says on its website.
Pasco County suspends emergency services due to hazardous conditions from Milton
PASCO COUNTY, Fla. — Pasco County on Florida's west coast north of Tampa has joined other counties in suspending all emergency services in response to Hurricane Milton’s impact, according to an alert sent at 7:46 p.m.
“We’re constantly monitoring weather conditions and emergency crews will respond as soon as it is safe to do so. Now is the time to remain sheltered where you are,” the alert said.
What has made Hurricane Milton so fierce and unusual?
With its mighty strength and its dangerous path, Hurricane Milton powered into a very rare threat flirting with experts’ worst fears.
Warm water fueled amazingly rapid intensification that took Milton from a minimal hurricane to a massive Category 5 in less than 10 hours. It weakened, but quickly bounced back. And when its winds briefly reached 180 mph, its barometric pressure, a key measurement for a storm’s overall strength, was among the lowest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico this late in the year.
At its most fierce, Milton almost maxed out its potential intensity given the weather factors surrounding it.
“Everything that you would want if you’re looking for a storm to go absolutely berserk is what Milton had,” Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said.
Milton also grew so potent because it managed to avoid high-level cross winds that often decapitate storms, especially in autumn. As Milton neared Florida it hit those winds, called shear, which ate away at its strength, as meteorologists had forecasted.
At 8 months pregnant, Florida resident makes tough choice not to evacuate
SARASOTA, Fla. — Jackie Curnick, 32, said she wrestled with her decision to stay and hunker down at home in Sarasota, Florida. But with a 2-year-old son and a baby girl on the way, Curnick and her husband thought it was for the best.
Curnick is due to give birth Oct. 29 to their daughter, who they’ve already named Callie.
Curnick said they started packing Monday to evacuate — collecting important documents, clothes, food, water and the bassinet for Callie if she came early. But they couldn’t find any available hotel rooms, and the few they came by were too expensive.
She said there were too many unanswered questions if they got in the car and left: Where to sleep, if they’d be able to fill up their gas tank, and if they could even find a safe route out of the state.
“The thing is it’s so difficult to evacuate in a peninsula,” she said. “In most other states, you can go in any direction to get out. In Florida there are only so many roads that take you north or south.”
Polluted waste from Florida’s fertilizer industry is in the path of Milton’s fury
As Hurricane Milton bears down on Florida’s west coast, environmentalists are worried it could scatter hazardous waste across the peninsula and into vulnerable waterways.
More than 1 billion tons of slightly radioactive phosphogypsum waste is stored in “stacks” that resemble enormous ponds at risk for leaks during major storms. Florida has 25 such stacks, most concentrated around enormous phosphate mines and fertilizer processing plants in the central part of the state, and environmentalists say nearly all of them are in Milton’s projected path.
“Placing vulnerable sites so close on major waterways that are at risk of damage from storms is a recipe for disaster,” said Ragan Whitlock, a staff attorney at the environmental group Center for Biological Diversity. “These are ticking time bombs.”
That waste is even more troublesome because there is no easy way to dispose of it, leaving it to pile up and become an ever-growing target for storms like Milton.
Over 130 tornado warnings issued across Florida ahead of Milton's arrival
MIAMI — As of Wednesday evening, three Florida offices of the National Weather Service had issued a total of 133 tornado warnings associated with Hurricane Milton.
The Miami and Tampa offices issued 49 warnings each, while Melbourne had 35.
Tornadoes damage mobile homes in rural area south of Orlando
LAKE PLACID, Fla. — Some mobile homes in a rural area south of Orlando were damaged Wednesday from tornadoes as Hurricane Milton approached Florida, according to the Highlands County Sheriff’s Office. One person sustained a minor injury.
Several homes in the Tropical Harbor Mobile Park Home in Lake Placid, Florida, were damaged, the sheriff’s office said.
Lake Placid is located about 100 miles (160 kilometers) south of Orlando, in the heart of Florida’s citrus country.
Milton weakening won’t diminish its impact, hurricane center says
MIAMI — U.S. National Hurricane Center forecaster Daniel Brown acknowledged that Hurricane Milton could still weaken a bit before making landfall, but it won’t have a significant, practical effect on the people and property in its path.
“It’s really not going to change the expected storm surge, dangerous winds and heavy rainfall,” Brown said.
Tornado damages St. Lucie Sheriff's office, sheriff says
WEST PALM BEACH, Fla. — A tornado ahead of Hurricane Milton’s landfall caused structural damage to the St. Lucie Sheriff’s office, Sheriff Keith Pearson said in a video posted on Facebook.
The video was posted at 3:22 p.m., and it showed a heavily damaged building broken under twisted metal.
“A tornado just touched down and took out a 10,000 square-foot (930 square-meters) facility that we have behind us,” Pearson said, pointing in the video toward the building.
Pearson said that nobody was injured and all deputies are safe. He urged residents to stay inside and to remain safe during the storm.
St. Lucie county is located on Florida’s east coast south of Vero Beach.
Georgia governor warns coastal residents to prepare for hazards from Milton
SAVANNAH, Ga. — Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp on Wednesday urged residents of the state’s coastal counties to prepare for falling trees, scattered power outages and potential flooding near the ocean as Hurricane Milton crosses Florida.
All 100 miles (160 kilometers) of the Georgia coast were under a tropical storm warning Wednesday and Thursday. Still, Milton’s impacts in the state were expected to be far less severe than those from Hurricane Helene, which killed 34 people in Georgia and inflicted widespread damage statewide two weeks ago.
“We don’t think this is going to be a hard hit,” Kemp told reporters after meeting with local emergency management officials in Savannah. “But we want to over-prepare and hope this storm, for us at least, under-delivers.”
Kemp said about 50,000 Georgia homes and businesses remain without electricity after Helene initially left more than 1.3 million in the dark. He said those still lacking power are in rural areas where customers are more spread out, causing repairs to take longer.
Officials work to protect IV supplies in Florida
WASHINGTON — Federal officials are working to move IV bags out of the path of Hurricane Milton, which is threatening another manufacturer of IV fluids even as hospitals nationwide are still reeling from disruptions caused by flooding at a large factory in North Carolina.
Medical manufacturer B. Braun Medical closed its facility in Daytona Beach, Florida, ahead of the storm. The company says it expects to resume manufacturing and shipping Friday morning.
Braun is one of several IV producers that have been tapped to boost supplies after Baxter International’s North Carolina plant was damaged in Hurricane Helene.
U.S. hospitals use more than 2 million IV bags daily to keep patients hydrated and deliver medicines. But the fallout from Hurricane Helene forced some hospitals to begin conserving supplies.
Couple plans to hunker down in their historic Tampa home with their 8 cats
TAMPA, Fla. — The two-story brick warehouse that Luisa Meshekoff calls home in Tampa’s Channel District has stood for nearly 100 years. She’s banking on it standing tonight and many more nights to come, as she, her partner David Head and their eight cats hunkered down at the home near the Port of Tampa.
“I have never seen it flood down here. And for a hundred years, we can find no information, … but that doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen,” Meshekoff said.
“We wanted to protect the building because it’s a historic living entity,” Head added. “And we wanted to protect our kitties.”
The couple’s home is in a mandatory evacuation zone. They considered leaving, but felt that carting their eight cats to a shelter wasn’t an option — and they worried that getting stuck on the roads could be more dangerous than just staying put.
“We could’ve gone to Lakeland, but that could’ve been worse, right?” Meshekoff said.
For now, they plan to try to rest while they can.
“I think if you have water and batteries, everything’s OK,” Meshekoff said. “I could be singing a different tune by 2 in the morning.”
Severe solar storm could stress power grids in hurricane-affected regions
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — Space weather forecasters say a severe solar storm heading to Earth could stress power grids even more as the U.S. deals with major back-to-back hurricanes.
A severe geomagnetic storm watch has been issued for Thursday into Friday. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said Wednesday it has notified operators of power plants and orbiting spacecraft to take precautions. It also alerted the Federal Emergency Management Agency about possible power disruptions.
Experts do not expect the storm to surpass the extreme solar storm that hit Earth in May. That one was the strongest to strike in more than two decades.
