Topline

Hurricane Milton is approaching Florida’s Gulf Coast, where millions have been told to evacuate as forecasters warn it could be be “one of the most destructive hurricanes on record” for the west-central part of the state.

Key Facts

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What Time Will Hurricane Milton Make Landfall?

The National Hurricane Center said Milton will likely make landfall as a major hurricane near or just south of the Tampa Bay region Wednesday night and will move off the east coast of Florida on Thursday afternoon.

Crucial Quote

“I’ve said many times that (if) you want to pick a fight with Mother Nature, she’s winning 100 percent of the time,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said. “And individuals that are in these, say you’re in a single-story home. Twelve feet is above that house. So, if you’re in it, you know, basically that’s the coffin you’re in.”

What Is Storm Surge And Where Could It Be The Worst?

Storm surge is the abnormal rise of seawater level caused by a storm. The NHC warned the combination of storm surge and the tide will cause areas that are normally dry near the coast to be flooded. From Anna Maria Island to Boca Grande, the storm surge could be nine to 13 feet above the ground. The surge is forecast to reach eight to 12 feet between Boca Grande and Bonita Beach, and could also reach those heights in Charlotte Harbor. For Tampa Bay, six to nine feet of surge is expected.

Where Have Tornado Warnings Been Issued?

Numerous tornado warnings were issued Wednesday afternoon in southern Florida and across the Interstate 95 corridor. Tornado watches are in effect for most of central and southern Florida through Wednesday night. The NHC noted a “risk of strong tornadoes” will continue through Wednesday evening.

What Have Politicians Said About Hurricane Milton?

President Joe Biden addressed the country from the White House Tuesday morning and called Hurricane Milton “a matter of life and death.” He encouraged Florida residents in the path of the storm to evacuate “now” and postponed a planned international trip to Germany and Angola “in order to oversee preparations for and the response to Hurricane Milton.” Vice President Kamala Harris and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis have been in a strange he-said-she-said about the incoming storm, with Harris accusing DeSantis of not taking her calls and “playing political games” DeSantis said Harris “has no role in this” and that he’s been communicating just fine with Biden, who also said he has been in touch. Biden said he gave DeSantis his personal phone number and told him to call if there is anything the federal government can do to help. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said in an interview with CNN, “I can say without any dramatization whatsoever: If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die.” Vice President Kamala Harris on Wednesday afternoon told CNN even if the category of the storm changed, “that is not actually a downgrade in terms of the danger and the dangerous potential of it,” urging Floridians to not rely on the designation “to their detriment.”

How Is Travel To Florida Impacted By Hurricane Milton?

Tampa International Airport closed at 9 a.m. Tuesday with plans to reopen “as soon as it is safe” later this week and Orlando International Airport closed at 8 a.m. Wednesday. More than 1,700 flights into and out of the United States were canceled as of 8:50 a.m. on Wednesday, and another 350 were delayed. Orlando saw by far the most cancellations, with 398 flights originating there being canceled and 423 flights arriving there being canceled, followed by Tampa with about 190 canceled each way, according to Flight Aware. Major airlines have told passengers they can change their plans without paying a fare difference. Walt Disney World Resort is closing its parks beginning Wednesday morning—news that came after Goldman Sachs predicted the company is likely to take a nine-figure hit financially from the storm. Universal Resort Orlando announced Tuesday afternoon it will close at 2 p.m. EDT Wednesday and remain closed Thursday. Legoland Florida Resort and SeaWorld Orlando will both be closed on Wednesday and Thursday, and Busch Gardens Tampa is now closed through Thursday.

Have Waffle Houses Closed For Hurricane Milton?

Yes. Tampa-area locations of Waffle House, the breakfast food chain, will close ahead of Milton’s projected landfall. The company cited the so-called “Waffle House Index” in a social media post explaining the decision, a reference to a scale invented by former Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) administrator Craig Fugate to judge the severity of a natural disaster. If Waffle Houses in an area are open and serving a full menu, it’s a green on the index, a limited menu is a yellow on the scale, meaning the local area could be without electricity or water, and the index goes to red if the locations close down, indicating the local community will be in need of significant help.

Could Hurricane Milton Be A Category 6 Hurricane?

No. There is currently no such thing as a Category 6 hurricane. The National Hurricane Center measures storm intensity using the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which ranks storms up to a Category 5, but some scientists think it may be time for a change. Earlier this year, researchers proposed adding a sixth hurricane category to describe storms with wind speeds above 192 mph and adjusting the current Category 5 description to include storms with winds between 157 and 192 mph. Using that proposed scale, five storms between 1980 and 2021 would have been classified as a Category 6, none of which threatened to make landfall in the United States. The National Hurricane Center in February said it has no plans to add a Category 6 to its hurricane scale.

Key Background

Milton will be the second major hurricane to hit Florida in two weeks. Hurricane Helene hit the state on Sept. 26, killing at least 20 in Florida, before going on to devastate parts of the southeastern United States. More than 220 people have died and hundreds more are still missing, with western North Carolina taking the brunt of flooding that the state’s governor says wiped communities “off the map.” In Florida, people are still working to clear debris from Helene as the next storm bears down. Ahead of Hurricane Milton, Hillsborough County, home to Tampa, ordered evacuations for areas near Tampa Bay and for all mobile and manufactured homes by Tuesday night. Lee County, home to Fort Myers, issued a mandatory evacuation order for the island of Fort Myers Beach. Other mandatory evacuation orders have been issued in Pinellas County, Pasco County and Manatee County. DeSantis on Tuesday said he wasn’t sure exactly how many people plan to evacuate for Hurricane Milton, but that he thinks those who saw Hurricane Helene will be particularly motivated to leave the area.

Tangent

Federal Emergency Management Agency has said it is grappling with “extremely damaging” false narratives circulating about Hurricane Helene, which hit the U.S. two weeks ago. FEMA chief Deanne Criswell said misinformation about the storm and the federal government’s response is the “worst” she’s ever seen as former President Donald Trump and his allies slam the agency. Trump incorrectly claimed FEMA couldn’t respond appropriately to the storm because it diverted so much money to helping migrants on the order of Vice President Kamala Harris. Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the agency is “meeting the immediate needs with the money that we have.” Other rumors include that FEMA has been withholding aid from areas that have historically voted Republican and that the agency is only giving $750 to disaster survivors to support their recovery.

Further Reading

ForbesWhy Officials Are Warning To Take Milton Seriously—Even As Designation Falls To Category 3By Mary Whitfill RoeloffsForbesHurricane Milton Hits Red On ‘Waffle House Index’—The Natural Disaster Scale, ExplainedBy Mary Whitfill RoeloffsForbesBiden Calls Out Trump And Marjorie Taylor Green For Hurricane Misinformation: ‘Beyond Ridiculous’By Molly BohannonForbesHurricane Milton Can’t Be A ‘Category 6’—But Some Researchers Think It’s Time To Create A New Tier For The Strongest StormsBy Mary Whitfill RoeloffsForbesFEMA Blasts Misinformation: The Campaign To Politicize Hurricane Helene, ExplainedBy Molly Bohannon

The category 5 Hurricane Milton is expected to double its wind field by the time it makes landfall in the US late Wednesday or early Thursday, with up to 15ft (4.5 metres) of storm surge along a low-lying stretch of the Florida coast that includes the cities of Tampa, St Petersburg and Sarasota.

Described as the “storm of a century”, with sustained winds still registering at 160mph (257km/h), Milton turned north-east overnight about 300 miles (480km) south-west of Tampa, aiming for heavily populated and highly vulnerable communities. It is expected to weaken slightly when it makes landfall to a category 4 with sustained wind speeds of about 130mph.

“Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the National Hurricane Center warned.

In an 8am update, the governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis, said it was not clear exactly where the eye of the storm would come ashore but the impact would be “broader than that … absolutely every place on the west coast of Florida could get major storm surge.”

DeSantis later said 8,000 national guard members would be activated and he had spoken with Joe Biden about Florida’s needs. “Everything that we’ve asked for, the administration has approved,” he said.

“If you are in a single storey home that is hit by a 15ft storm surge, which means that water comes in immediately, there’s nowhere to go,” said the mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor.

“So if you’re in it, basically that’s the coffin that you’re in.”

Deanne Criswell, the director of Fema, said at a news conference that she would travel to Florida on Wednesday – and would send more agency personnel to the state. “I want the people to hear it from me directly: Fema is ready.”

Authorities have issued mandatory evacuation orders across 11 Florida counties with a combined population of about 5.9 million people and said anyone choosing to stay behind must fend for themselves.

Before Helene hit, residents staying behind were encouraged to write their name and social security numbers on their bodies for easier postmortem identification.

Under current projections, the surge is expected to hit Fort Myers Beach, an area still recovering from Hurricane Ian two years ago that smashed a causeway to outlying islands.

The area was also hit by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, raising concerns that discarded furniture, appliances and debris from that storm will become projectiles in this next one. DeSantis said the state deployed more than 300 dump trucks that had removed 1,300 loads of debris.

One resident said he had seen bull sharks swimming in the flooded streets after Helene.

No matter exactly where Milton comes ashore, the damage is expected to be extensive, with seawater funneling up through coastal channels inland. Cody Fritz at the US National Hurricane Center storm surge team told NBC News: “Florida’s west coast is very sensitive to storm surge. It doesn’t take much to push water over land that would be dry. It’s extremely vulnerable.”

Kara Doran, a US geological survey scientist, said the risk of permanent change to the coastline “cannot be overstated as I believe communities are more vulnerable to this storm’s impacts due to the erosion that occurred recently from Helene”.

Residents trying to leave have been faced with gas shortages and gridlocked roads. There are few hotels to shelter in and no flights out of the area. Ashley Khrais, a resident of Holiday, Florida, just inland from the coast, told NBC: “it seems very, very scary, but there’s no way to leave.”

Mark Prompakdee, 71, a resident of a trailer park near St Petersburg, said he planned to sit the storm out in a minivan parked on higher ground at a high school. “They’re saying, ‘Get out of here,’” he said. “Where?”

But many people appeared to have heeded the warnings. “If there’s any good news here, we toured Fort Myers beach yesterday [and] it looks like people have listened to those warnings,” said Jay Gray of NBC News.

Efforts to protect property with sandbags and by boarding up windows had been done “with the knowledge that this could be the most powerful storm many in this area have ever seen, and they’ve seen plenty”, Gray said.

The National Weather Service warned that as Milton began moving onshore on Wednesday “conditions will be favorable for tornado development, even far away from the expected landfall”.

With area airports now closed, operators said they would not reopen until damage had been assessed. A spokesperson for Tampa international airport told Scripps News that safety was critical for their operations and it could not act as a shelter for travelers stuck there since it is located in an evacuation zone.

It is well documented that the Tampa Bay area is extremely vulnerable to hurricanes and that the region has also dodged major hurricanes over the last century.

It is far too early for residents around Tampa Bay to breathe a sigh of relief, but Hurricane Milton wobbled farther south than expected Tuesday, leading to a southern shift in the forecast from the National Hurricane Center.

Meteorologists usually stress not to focus on the exact track and to not even focus on the cone, because significant impacts always occur outside of the cone. In fact, the cone from the National Hurricane Center is only designed to capture the path of the storm two-thirds of the time. That means that one in three times the storm’s track falls outside of the cone. However, that exact track is very important when it comes to the details of the impacts.

The worst storm surge in Hurricane Milton is forecast to be near the landfall point and to the south, based on the angle it is approaching the coast. If the current trajectories showing a path toward Sarasota hold true, the worst storm surge would be into places like Sarasota, Venice and southward into surge-vulnerable places like Port Charlotte and Punta Gorda. On the northern side of the storm, winds across Tampa Bay would largely push water out of the bay, potentially even reducing the water levels as happened during Hurricane Ian, which made landfall near Fort Myers in 2022.

This current trajectory is only about 40 miles south of Tampa or 20 miles south of the mouth of Tampa Bay, and the NHC warns that uncertainty remains and additional wobbles – north or south – are possible. It is also very important to note that Tampa is still within the cone of uncertainty.

Even with a potential track south of Tampa, which would spare that area the worst of the surge, there is still a significant risk of catastrophic hurricane-force winds and flooding rain. Hurricane Milton is expected to grow into a large storm as it approaches landfall, and much of the Florida Peninsula will experience the wrath of the storm.