Cat 5 Hurricane roars towards storm-battered Florida…

More than 2.6 million homes and businesses are without power as Hurricane Milton spun across central Florida, according to the website PowerOutages.us.

Energy companies serve more than 11.5 million customer accounts statewide, according to the website. The number of people left without electricity continued to grow as the hurricane cut a path eastward across the state after making landfall on the Gulf Coast.

The National Weather Service says the storm’s maximum sustained wind speed was 90 mph (145 kph) at about 1 a.m. Thursday as it passed east of Lakeland, Florida, on its way across the central peninsula.

The weather service uses something called the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to estimate potential property damage caused by a hurricane’s sustained wind speed. A Category 1 hurricane is considered to have very dangerous winds that topple shallow-rooted trees, snap tree limbs and damage the exterior of well-constructed frame homes. They can also cause extensive damage to power lines.

Hurricane Milton was a Category 3 storm when it made landfall Wednesday evening. That rating means devastating damage is expected to occur, including roofs torn from well-constructed homes, trees uprooted, and electricity and water systems unavailable for days to weeks.

High wind speeds are not the only dangers caused by hurricanes. Hurricane Milton spawned several devastating tornadoes that wreaked havoc on Florida communities Wednesday afternoon. Heavy rainfall and storm surges also caused dangerous flooding in some coastal areas.

The hurricane had maximum sustained winds of about 100 mph (160 kph) as it hovered near Fort Meade, about 45 miles (72 kilometers) east of Tampa, early Thursday morning, the National Weather Service said.

The hurricane was expected to continue traveling mostly eastward until it enters the Atlantic Ocean sometime late Thursday, the weather service said.

The damaging winds were accompanied by heavy rainfall, and the weather service issued a flash flood emergency statement for portions of west-central Florida. Flash flood emergency statements generally mean life-threatening catastrophic water rising events are already underway or expected to occur in the immediate future.

Florida Highway Patrol troopers said they rescued a dog tied to a pole on I-75 in Tampa Wednesday ahead of Hurricane Milton. The dog later received a “clean bill of health” after troopers brought him to a veterinarian, according to the Florida Department of Highway Safety.

Fire officials say a crane has collapsed in downtown St. Petersburg, but there are no reports of injuries.

The crane was at the site of a 515-foot-tall luxury high-rise building under construction that is being billed as one of the tallest buildings on the west coast of Florida. It was scheduled to be completed in summer 2025.

St. Petersburg Fire Rescue issued a statement saying the crane collapse and roof damage at Tropicana Field were among two critical reports it had received of damage after Hurricane Milton made landfall south of the city.

The site of the crane collapse is about six blocks from the city’s pier.

St. Petersburg is about 50 miles north of Siesta Key, where Milton made landfall.

Over 2 million customers are without power as Hurricane Milton cut a path through central Florida late Wednesday night, according to the website PowerOutages.us.

Energy companies serve more than 11.5 million customer accounts statewide, according to the website. The number of people left without electricity continued to grow as hurricane-spawned tornados, sustained tropical winds and flooding inundated the region.

Nearly 100% of customers in Hardee County were without power, and people in Sarasota, Manatee and Pinella counties were also hit hard by outages.

Singer Taylor Swift has donated $5 million to help relief efforts for people impacted by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.

Feeding America CEO Claire Babineaux-Fontenot announced the donation Wednesday in an Instagram post thanking Swift for “standing with us in the movement to end hunger and for helping communities in need.”

“We’re incredibly grateful to Taylor Swift for her generous $5 million donation to Hurricanes Helene and Milton relief efforts,” Babineaux-Fontenot wrote. “This contribution will help communities rebuild and recover, providing essential food, clean water, and supplies to people affected by these devastating storms.”

Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Bay Rays, appears to be badly damaged from the hurricane.

Television images showed that the fabric that serves as the domed building’s roof had been ripped to shreds. It was not immediately clear if there was damage inside the stadium.

The Rays’ stadium was not being used as a shelter, but the Tampa Bay Times reported that it was being used as “a staging site for workers” who were brought to the area to deal with the storm’s aftermath.

The stadium opened in 1990 and initially cost $138 million. It was due to be replaced in time for the 2028 season with a $1.3 billion ballpark.

Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm. Footage from Tampa and traffic cameras across the state’s south showed the storm’s intensity. (AP footage: Haven Daley)

Before Milton even made landfall Wednesday evening on Florida’s Gulf Coast, tornadoes were touching down across the state. The Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce, on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, was hit particularly hard, destroying homes and leaving some residents dead.

“We have lost some life,” St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News. He did not say how many people were killed.

Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, bringing powerful winds, deadly storm surge and potential flooding to much of Florida. AP reporter Kate Payne shows what the conditions look like from her hotel in downtown Tampa.

Hurricane Milton will continue to bring “devastating rains and damaging winds” across the central Florida peninsula throughout Thursday before exiting the state late in the day for the Atlantic Ocean, the National Weather Service says.

The hurricane had maximum sustained winds of about 105 miles per hour (165 km/hour) at 11 p.m. Wednesday, according to the weather service, and storm surge warnings were in effect for parts of Florida’s western and eastern coastlines.

The weather service said Boca Grande, Florida, could see a surge as high as 13 feet above ground if it hits at the same time as high tide

The service also said tornadoes were possible through early Thursday morning over parts of central and eastern Florida.

Multiple tornadoes spawned by the storm caused major damage to several communities Wednesday evening before the hurricane made landfall.

More than 1.6 million power customers in Florida were left in the dark Wednesday night as Hurricane Milton battered the state with tornadoes, flooding and strong winds.

Counties along the western coast of the peninsula were hardest hit, particularly in the central portion of the state. Nearly all of the roughly 9,600 Peace River Electric Coop customers in Hardee County were without power shortly after 10 p.m., according to the website PowerOutage.us.

Outage numbers were climbing throughout the evening but still have not yet reached the totals seen when Hurricane Ian hit Florida in 2022. That storm affected more than 4.45 million power customers over several days in four states, according to PowerOutage.usimpacting more than 9.6 million people in all.

About 90 minutes after making landfall Wednesday night, Milton was centered about 20 miles (30 kilometers) northeast of Sarasota, the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported. It was moving east-northeast at 16 mph (26 kph).

The storm had weakened to a Category 2 hurricane, with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (175 kph).

The storm was no less dangerous, however; the National Weather Service also issued a rare flash flood emergency statement for the Tampa Bay area, including the cities of St. Petersburg and Clearwater.

The emergency announcement means the weather service believes extremely heavy rain is leading to a severe threat to human live and that catastrophic damage from a flash flood is either already happening or will happen soon. They are typically made when emergency officials report life-threatening water level rises resulting in rescues or evacuations.

Wind gusts as high as 102 miles per hour (165 km/h) were reported at a Tampa Bay-area fishing pier as Hurricane Milton pummeled Florida Wednesday night, the National Hurricane Center said.

The tropical cyclone was bringing life-threatening storm surge and flash flooding along with the extreme winds, the hurricane center said.

The weather service said the hurricane sustained winds of 115 mph (185 kph) as the center of the storm passed near the town of Sarasota, making the storm still a Category 3.

Officials say search and rescue efforts are underway in Florida after dangerous tornadoes ripped through the region.

About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, said Kevin Guthrie, the director of Florida’s Division of Emergency Management.

St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson posted a video to Facebook showing a 10,000 square-foot (930 square-meters) iron building that had been twisted into a crumpled heap by a tornado. The structure was where the sheriff’s office kept its patrol cars, but luckily no one was inside when it fell, Pearson said.

More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Florida, according to PowerOutage.uswhich tracks utility reports.

The highest number of outages were in Sarasota County — where the storm made landfall — and in neighboring Manatee County.

Siesta Key, a barrier island off Sarasota, is a prosperous strip of powdery, white sand beaches and picturesque sunsets, celebrated with a drum circle on Sundays.

Florida International University professor Stephen Leatherman, a.k.a. “Dr. Beach,” named Siesta Beach the United States’ best beach in 2017, and MTV’s “Siesta Key” gave audiences a reality-show view of the place in recent years.

Many of Siesta Key’s about 5,500 residents are of retirement age.

Power outages continued to spread across Florida Wednesday night as Hurricane Milton ripped through the state.

More than 800,000 customers were without power shortly after 9 p.m. according to PowerOutages.us. Many of the outages were focused along the peninsula’s western coast and in a pathway through the center of the state, where multiple tornadoes had formed in the hurricane’s rain band.

Nearly 700,000 customers were without power in Florida early Wednesday night as hurricane Milton pummeled the state, according to PowerOutage.us.

Tampa Electric, Florida Power & Light Company and Duke Energy were reporting some of the largest outages as the hurricane made landfall about 68 miles (109 kilometers) south of Tampa.

Some power lines were taken down earlier in the day by tornadoes that formed in the rain band of the hurricane.

Many Florida energy companies warned customers in advance to prepare for outages caused by the storm. Duke Energy Florida said in a statement earlier Wednesday that it was staging resources along the outside of the hurricane’s projected path to respond to outages as soon as weather and other conditions allow.

There are more than 11.5 million power customers in Florida, according to PowerOutage.us.

Hurricane Milton made landfall in Siesta Key, Florida, on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center said. It is a barrier island off Sarasota with white-sand beaches and has about 5,500 residents.

The community is about 70 miles (113 kilometers) south of Tampa. While the city did not take a direct hit, Hurricane Milton was still producing deadly storm surge and powerful winds in the area.

Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm, bringing powerful winds, deadly storm surge and potential flooding to much of the state. Milton drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters, twice reaching Category 5 status.

The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph) when it roared ashore near Siesta Key, Florida, at 8:30 p.m., the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. The storm 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.

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.

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.

As of 8 p.m. Wednesday, Milton was centered about 20 miles (30 kilometers) west-southwest of Sarasota, Florida, and had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

The Category 3 storm was “close to making landfall.” It was moving northeast at 15 mph (28 kph), slowing slightly from earlier in the afternoon.

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.

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.

▶ Read more on how Milton got its devastating power.

As of 7 p.m. Wednesday, Milton was closing in on Florida’s west coast.

The Category 3 hurricane was centered about 35 miles (50 kilometers) west-southwest of Sarasota, Florida, and had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

The storm was moving northeast at 15 mph (28 kph), slowing slightly from earlier in the afternoon.

“The northern eyewall of Hurricane Milton is beginning to move onshore of the Florida gulf coast near Tampa and St. Petersburg where an Extreme Wind Warning is now in effect,” the hurricane center said in its latest advisory. “Please shelter in place as these extremely dangerous hurricane-force winds overspread the region.”

Jackie Curnick, 32, said she wrestled with her decision to stay and hunker down at home in Sarasota. 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.”

President Joe Biden on Wednesday blasted his predecessor for spreading an “onslaught of lies” about how the federal government is handling the damage from Hurricane Helene as Hurricane Milton was near making landfall in Florida.

“Quite frankly, these lies are un-American,” Biden said from the White House. “Former President Trump has led this onslaught of lies.”

Biden said that Trump and his allies have misrepresented the response and resources of the Federal Emergency Management Agency. The president singled out Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, a Georgia Republican, saying she claimed the federal government could control the weather.

Asked why he believed his Republican opponents were not talking accurately about the government’s response, Biden said, “I don’t know.”

President Joe Biden is blasting his predecessor for spreading an “onslaught of lies” about how the federal government is handling the damage from Hurricane Helene as another hurricane, Milton, was on the verge of making landfall in Florida.

Citing wind gusts of more than 50 mph (80 kph) , Pinellas County, where St. Petersburg is located, issued a shelter-in-place advisory just before 6:30 p.m. for anyone who did not evacuate as Hurricane Milton approached Florida’s west coast. The county is home to more than 960,000 people, according to U.S. Census Bureau estimates.

Just south, Manatee County announced at about the same time that it had suspended emergency services due to increasingly hazardous conditions. The county alert said “911 emergency calls will be logged and queued based on priority and will be responded to as soon as safe to do so.”

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.

▶ Read more about hazardous waste concerns.

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.

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.

Water is already covering some roadways in Lee County, where Fort Myers is, as rain bands and storm surge from Hurricane Milton were hitting southwest Florida, according to the sheriff’s office.

One road, Inlet Drive, was covered with knee-deep water shortly after 5 p.m. and water from the Gulf was flooding and spreading sand across other roads in the area, officials said.

The sheriff and other local officials urged residents in the southwestern Florida coastal county to stay home and off the roadways until the storm passes.

As of 6 p.m. Wednesday, Milton was centered about 50 miles (80 kilometers) west-southwest of Sarasota, Florida, and had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

The Category 3 storm was moving northeast at 15 mph (28 kph).

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.

A flash flood warning has been issued for St. Petersburg, Clearwater and Largo in Pinellas County along the Gulf Coast until 7:45 p.m., according to the National Weather Service.

The city of Sarasota also announced on X a flash flood warning in effect until then.

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 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.”

Camping id 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.

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.

▶ Read more about how recent hurricanes have affected IV supplies.

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.

“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.”

As of 5 p.m. EDT Wednesday, Hurricane Milton was centered about 60 miles (100 kilometers) west-southwest of Sarasota, Florida, and had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (195 kph), the U.S. National Hurricane Center reported.

The Category 3 storm was moving northeast at 17 mph (28 kph).

More than 5,000 people were in shelters in the storm’s path east of the Tampa-St. Petersburg area but officials urged others not to venture out to one at this point, as storms began bringing down power lines and causing flooding Wednesday afternoon.

Several tornadoes were reported in the area but none had touched down.

The county had 19 shelters open, including three that were pet-friendly.

Already officials were urging people to use common sense after the storm. Keep out of flooded areas because it can be hard to tell how deep the water is or what dangers lurk under the surface, Womble said.

And be careful using generators: Don’t run them indoors or in garages, don’t spill gasoline on a hot motor and don’t link one to a home circuit if you’re not a professional electrician, he said.

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.

▶ Read more on the solar storm’s expected effects.

The U.S. Coast Guard has pre-staged and prepositioned personnel, aircraft and boats in advance of Hurricane Milton.

“Our Coast Guard crews are part of the communities where they live and serve. Our homes and families were also impacted by Helene and now, they are threatened by Milton,” said Rear Adm. Douglas Schofield, the commander of the Seventh Coast Guard District in Miami.

Coast Guard crews are ready to assist with urgent search and rescue, to assess damage to seaports and expedite their safe reopening, and to respond to marine pollution incidents resulting from the storm.

There are 27 aircraft, including 17 on immediate standby and 10 Coast Guard Auxiliary aircraft. There are also 30 cutters and three floodwater response teams, with 16 crews and 19 boats stationed at Camp Blanding in northeast Florida.

In a statement published online Wednesday afternoon, the Pasco County Public Information Office said if residents hadn’t evacuated yet, it was “time to ride out the storm where you are.”

In a follow up video message, Pasco Assistant Fire Chief Ryan Guynn said there would be a window of several hours during the storm when emergency workers would not be able to respond to calls in person. He instructed residents in need of assistance to call 911 and be as descriptive as possible. First responders will then assist when they can, he said.