A weakening but still tremendously powerful Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s west coast on Wednesday night as a category 3, pushing ahead of it a massive and potentially deadly wall of water from the Gulf of Mexico, as well as “catastrophic” winds likely to cause significant property damage.
The cyclone, described earlier in the day by Joe Biden as “the storm of the century”, made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, just after 8:30pm ET, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami 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.
Despite losing some of its potency to wind shear as it neared the coast, Milton, which had churned in the Gulf of Mexico over the last two days as a category 5 storm, was still one of the strongest hurricanes to strike the US mainland in recent memory.
It was also the second direct hit on Florida in 12 days, after Hurricane Helene’s deadly rampage through the state’s panhandle towards Georgia and the Carolinas beginning on 27 September. Areas devastated by Helene received another pounding as Milton swept ashore with winds above 120mph.
On Wednesday night, a flash flood emergency was in effect for the Tampa Bay area including the cities of Tampa, St Petersburg and Clearwater, the hurricane center said, with St Petersburg already receiving 16.6 inches (42cm) of rain on Wednesday.
So large was its wind field that areas in south Florida, hundreds of miles from Milton’s core, saw dozens of tornado warnings, and at least seven twisters on the ground. In Fort Myers, a tornado spawned in Milton’s outer bands ripped the roof from a house.
With the storm coming ashore before high tide, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said he hoped the west coast of the state could avoid the worst predicted storm surge. Forecasters said seawater could rise as high as 13 feet (four metres).
The tornadoes caused damage in numerous counties, and destroyed about 125 homes, most of them mobile homes, DeSantis said.
More than 1.3m homes and businesses in Florida were without power.
“At this point, it’s too dangerous to evacuate safely, so you have to shelter in place and just hunker down,” DeSantis said upon announcing the landfall.
Authorities had warned for days of Milton’s deadly potential, ordering an evacuation of millions of people in coastal areas along west Florida’s Gulf coast vulnerable to a predicted storm surge of up to 15 feet.
Jane Castor, the mayor of Tampa, issued a sobering alert to those in evacuation zones choosing to stay, telling them their homes would become their coffins.
William Tokajer, police chief of Holmes Beach, advised holdouts to write their names, dates of birth and social security numbers on their limbs with Sharpies to help identify their bodies after the storm.
DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 51 of the state’s 67 counties.
“It’s looking like the storm of the century,” Biden said in an address from the White House in which he urged those in the storm’s path to heed safety advice from local authorities. “It’s literally a matter of life and death”.
The president also condemned falsehoods repeated by Donald Trump, the Republican candidate in next month’s election, that federal recovery funds were being redirected to immigrants. “What a ridiculous thing to say,” Biden said.
Milton, the NHC said, would remain a hurricane as it passed across Florida to the east on Thursday, crossing the popular tourist destination of Orlando before emerging into the Atlantic.
“Heavy rainfall across the Florida peninsula through Thursday brings the risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding along with moderate to major river flooding,” it said in an afternoon advisory.
