Hurricane Milton could double in size as it surges toward Florida's coast
Communities in Florida — some still reeling from Hurricane Helene — are now bracing for the landfall of a new storm, Hurricane Milton, which is expected to approach the Tampa Bay area on Wednesday night.
Hurricane Milton intensified from a tropical storm to a powerful, life-threatening hurricane much faster than predicted.
“If you are in a storm surge warning area, this is an extremely life-threatening situation and you should follow any evacuation advice,” National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said on Tuesday.
“You're gonna see large areas covered with deep water from the Gulf of Mexico pushing inland,” Brennan said of the surge. “Structural damage to buildings, especially from destructive wave action with some buildings being totally washed away. Some locations may be uninhabitable for an extended period.”
As of 11 a.m. ET Tuesday, Milton was about 520 miles southwest of Tampa, moving at 9 miles per hour and carrying maximum sustained wind speeds of 150 mph. A slew of advisories are in effect across large stretches of the western Florida coastline, where storm surges could reach as high as 15 feet.
Forecasters warn that Milton will remain a major storm -- and it will get bigger as it approaches Florida, widening the potential areas where communities could see dangerous winds and flooding.
“In fact, the official forecast shows the hurricane and tropical-storm-force winds roughly doubling in size by the time it makes landfall,” the NHC said on Tuesday.
Local resources
Member stations across the NPR Network in Florida are covering the local impact of Hurricane Milton.
Milton is expected to make landfall on the western coast of Florida late Wednesday or early Thursday morning. But NHC forecasters also warn that weather conditions in Florida will start to deteriorate much earlier on Wednesday, urging people to complete any preparations on Tuesday.
"Hurricane conditions are expected in the warning area on the west coast of Florida as early as Wednesday afternoon, with tropical storm conditions beginning early Wednesday," the agency said.
Projections call for Milton to hit Florida's Gulf Coast south of Tampa as a major storm, and likely maintain hurricane strength as it blasts across the state south of Orlando and exits into the Atlantic Ocean. Forecasters caution that slight deviations in conditions could alter its track, urging residents to be vigilant for updates from local officials.
Counties have enforced mandatory evacuation zones, and state and local officials have profusely warned residents to follow those orders.
“Schools in more than 20 counties are slated to close Tuesday," member station WUSF reports. "The University of Florida and several other colleges canceled classes this week.”
Milton underwent a stunning explosive intensification after becoming a hurricane on Sunday, ratcheting up its windspeeds over very warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico and benefiting from a lack of strong wind shear. By Monday night it had sustained winds of 180 mph, making it a fearsome Category 5 storm.
By early Tuesday morning, the National Hurricane Center had slightly downgraded Milton from a Category 5 to a Category 4 storm, but officials at the agency warned of the storm's power.
The storm's center is forecast to skim past Mexico's northern Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday, bringing hurricane conditions to the area before heading northeast toward the U.S.
The new threat comes just under two weeks after Hurricane Helene — another rapidly intensifying storm — brought catastrophic levels of storm surge, rain and strong winds to Florida.
In an update from the NHC late Tuesday morning, Brennan urged people well inland to be mindful of Milton’s strong winds, saying that regardless of where it makes landfall, the storm could wreak destruction across the interior of the I-4 Corridor over to Florida’s east coast.
In some places within that region, he said, “we'll see widespread power outages, significant structural damage.”
When Category 3 winds from the storm’s core arrive, he added, “you can see devastating damage even to well-built framed homes; mobile homes will be severely damaged with some destroyed; large trees will be snapped or uprooted.”
The U.S. Coast Guard’s St. Petersburg sector declared “port condition Zulu” as of Tuesday morning, closing 19 Florida ports to traffic. The designation means “gale force winds could impact our maritime operations within 12 hours,” according to Port Tampa Bay. The port says Hurricane Milton will disrupt the plans of at least three cruise ship companies: Carnival; Margaritaville at Sea; and Royal Caribbean.
In advance of the storm's arrival, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis issued a state of emergency for 51 counties. "You don't have to evacuate hundreds of miles," Ron DeSantis has said. "Every county has places within them that you can go to. Maybe it's a friend's house, maybe it's a hotel, maybe it's a shelter."
Air travel into and around Florida is already being disrupted by Milton. Tampa International Airport said it was pausing flights beginning at 9 a.m. Tuesday. The Federal Aviation Administration said on X, formerly Twitter, that it was "closely monitoring" the path of the hurricane and advised travelers to check the agency's flight travel dashboard and their airlines for updates.
