Floridians are finishing last-minute preparations as Hurricane Milton approaches, with the storm expected to have life-threatening impacts from Wednesday into Thursday.
Milton, now a Category 4 storm, had maximum sustained winds of 150 mph and was moving in an east-northeast direction at 9 mph, the hurricane center said in a Tuesday update.
Milton is expected to bring a deadly storm surge, destructive winds and flooding rain, Fox Weather reports. Forecasters warned of a possible 10- to 15-foot storm surge in Tampa Bay. It is the highest surge ever predicted for that location and has led to evacuation orders for communities all along the coast.
The storm could also bring widespread flooding, with 5 inches to a foot of rain forecast for the Florida peninsula, and even up to 18 inches in some places.
Eleven Florida counties under mandatory evacuation orders are home to about 5.9 million people, according to county-level population estimates from the U.S. Census Bureau.
Media outlets showed masses of cars attempting to evacuate Florida’s west coast on I-75 and State Road 56. Some are heading toward the Orlando metro area, where one resident is prepared to sell her home should it flood again.
“We are trying to prepare our home best we can inside and pack up to leave to go to my daughters’,” Winter Springs resident Denise Rossignolo-Brown told Fox News Digital. “It’s all so disheartening at our ages we are dealing with this.”
The hurricane is going to impact communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene just weeks ago, and will likely devastate areas hit by Hurricane Ian in 2022.
Rossignolo-Brown said that, after Ian, she and her family could not even enter their home for three days due to high water levels.
“It was a total nightmare,” she said.
Over the weekend, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 51 of the state’s 67 counties.
President Biden approved the state’s pre-landfall emergency declaration request on Monday, which allows the Department of Homeland Security and the Federal Emergency Management Agency to coordinate disaster relief efforts and provide appropriate assistance for required emergency measures.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor issued a dire warning for those who choose to stay behind in mandatory evacuation zones as Hurricane Milton barrels toward Florida.
“Helene was a wake-up call, this is literally catastrophic,” Castor said on CNN. “If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die.”
Before this Atlantic hurricane season started, forecasters said everything lined up to be a monster busy year, and it began that way when Beryl was the earliest storm to reach Category 5 on record. Then, nothing. From Aug. 20 – the traditional start of peak hurricane season – to Sept. 23 it was record quiet, Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach told the Associated Press.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
