Hurricane Milton approaching Category 4 strength as Florida prepares major landfall
Hurricane Milton was intensifying faster than expected Monday morning, reaching Category 3 strength and approaching Category 4, according to the National Hurricane Center’s 8 a.m. advisory. Forecasters began issuing watches for most of Florida’s west coast ahead of a landfall within days.
The forecast track of Milton was aimed just miles south of Tampa Bay on Monday morning and forecasters warned of potentially life-threatening storm surge, destructive winds, possible tornadoes and widespread torrential rain.
Milton’s maximum sustained winds as of 8 a.m. Monday were 125 miles per hour. A Category 4 hurricane is 130 miles per hour or higher.
If peak surge occurs at high tide, experts are estimating 8 to 12 feet of surge in Tampa Bay and around the Anclote River to Englewood.
Milton is expected to continue gaining power ahead of landfall, according to the National Hurricane Center, though forecasters said it’s still too soon to be certain about the exact track and magnitude. Some weakening is possible before landfall, hurricane center forecasters said, but officials advised residents to prepare for the worst.
“Do not try to game the forecast,” Gov. Ron DeSantis urged residents at a hurricane briefing Sunday night. “Be cautious how you’re looking at this data and make inferences you are going to be in the clear.”
Milton could make landfall late Wednesday or early Thursday but its effects are likely to begin much earlier as Milton’s wind field expands over the Gulf of Mexico’s warm and deep waters.
DeSantis declared a state of emergency for 51 counties, excluding only counties in the far western Panhandle. Although much of South Florida — with the exception of northern Palm Beach County — was south of the forecast cone Monday morning, the state of emergency includes Broward, Palm Beach and Miami-Dade counties.
Milton’s forecast cone “covers almost the entire west coast of Florida,” DeSantis said Sunday. “(It’s) not any type of storm that has been dealt with, certainly in recent years … This is an unusual track in terms of it coming in from the Pacific Ocean, hopping across Mexico, forming and then coming horizontally into the west coast of Florida.”
‘Of course we’re worried’: South Floridians prepare to hunker down ahead of Hurricane Milton
DeSantis said Sunday that while it remains to be seen just where Milton will strike, it’s clear that Florida is going to be hit hard — “I don’t think there’s any scenario where we don’t have major impacts at this point.”
The state’s Director of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, said the state is preparing for the largest hurricane evacuation since 2017, when Hurricane Irma cut through the entire length of the Florida peninsula from the Keys to Georgia.
At the Sunday evening news conference, emergency management officials urged residents to use the website fl511.com for emergency evacuation information.
The state has prepared emergency fuel sources and electric vehicle charging stations along evacuation routes, and “identified every possible location that can possibly house someone along those routes,” Guthrie said. People who live in homes built after Florida strengthened its codes in 2004, who don’t depend on constant electricity and who aren’t in evacuation zones, should probably avoid the roads, he said.
The forecast track for Milton is particularly concerning for the Tampa Bay area.
DeSantis said Sunday that Milton is expected to make landfall in Pinellas County. Still, “models can shift,” he warned. “Don’t get wedded to where the landfall is being predicted right now. The cone, at this point, effectively, can bring it almost anywhere on the western Florida peninsula.”
DeSantis stated that crews readying to mobilize for power restoration, and that Milton may cause outages greater than those brought by Hurricane Helene.
There is a “massive amount of resources being marshalled,” he added.
The Federal Emergency Management Agency, meanwhile, coordinated with the governor and briefed President Joe Biden Sunday on how it has staged lifesaving resources.
“If the center of Milton tracks just to the north of Tampa Bay, the scope of potential storm surge is impossible to imagine,” Fox Weather hurricane specialist Brian Norcross wrote on his blog, Hurricane Intel. “Think of of Helene’s surge and add another few feet.”
Milton is expected to bring rain totals of 5 to 8 inches, with localized areas seeing potentially up to 12 inches, across portions of the Florida peninsula and the Keys through Wednesday night. That will come on top of moisture ahead of the hurricane that is already saturating the state.
A flood watch is in effect for all of South Florida lasting into Thursday morning.
Since many of the counties under the Milton state of emergency are still recovering from Hurricane Helene, DeSantis asked the Florida Division of Emergency Management and the Florida Department of Transportation to coordinate all available resources and personnel to supplement local communities as they expedite debris removal.
As many as 4,000 National Guard troops are helping state crews to remove the tons of debris left behind by Helene, DeSantis said, and he directed that Florida crews dispatched to North Carolina in Helene’s aftermath return to the state to prepare for Milton.
As of 7 a.m. Monday, Milton was located about 750 miles west-southwest of Tampa, moving east-southeast at 8 mph with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph.
Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 25 miles from the center, and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 80 miles from the center.
With Milton achieving hurricane status, this is the first time the Atlantic has had three simultaneous hurricanes after September, said Colorado State University hurricane scientist Phil Klotzbach. There have been four simultaneous hurricanes in August and September.
Andy Jensen loads sandbags into his car in Oakland Park on Sunday. (Joe Cavaretta/South Florida Sun Sentinel)
The projected impact of Milton to the South Florida region is still being assessed, but is generally expected to be late Tuesday into Thursday.
Other tropical systems
Far in the Atlantic, there’s Hurricane Leslie and a weakening Hurricane Kirk. Neither is a threat to land.
Leslie, located 1,065 miles west of Africa’s southernmost Cabo Verde Islands, had a maximum sustained wind speed of 90 mph and was moving northwest at 13 mph as of 5 a.m. Monday. In the five-day track, forecasters are projecting the storm to turn to the northwest, away from the Caribbean, and increase in forward speed. Leslie may begin weakening sometime in the next day or so.
Swells and rip currents generated by Kirk were continuing to affect the U.S. East Coast and parts of the Caribbean and Atlantic on Monday.
In addition, the National Hurricane Center is watching a tropical wave that is expected to move off the west coast of Africa in a few days, although the chance of development is low, with a 30% chance through the next seven days.
The next named storm will be Nadine.
Staff writer Lisa J. Huriash contributed to this report, which was supplemented by information from the Associated Press.
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