Hurricane Milton, coming on the heels of Hurricane Helene, was expected to make landfall tonight between 9:00 and 11:00 p.m., “somewhere” on Florida’s central Gulf Coast. Even though its strength may be downgraded to a Category 3—and this isn’t certain—it is still predicted to be one of the most destructive storms on record with life-threatening storm surges on the western Florida coast, the Weather Channel reported. According to the Washington Post today Helene sent a storm surge of five to seven feet into the Tampa Bay area, where more than 3 million people live. Milton may cause a surge twice that size. Flooding could be “catastrophic.”
Victims are experiencing the results of a complete collapse of the physical economy, making protection of human life and infrastructure impossible. As one young woman who was struggling to find safety commented to the Post, “this should not be a regular part of life for anybody.” People are scrambling to evacuate, find gas, find a seat on a plane, a hotel room, a shelter or a friend who lives on higher ground. According to the Miami Herald, 300,000 people are already without power, and power outages from Milton could be much greater than those that occurred under Helene, because Milton is aimed at the far more densely populated Tampa Bay area with more homes and businesses. Resources and available utility workers are stretched. Workers will have to be brought in from several states to deal with outages and that will affect restoration time.
Ahead of landfall, heavy wind gusts were spreading across parts of the state. CNN warns that “mounds of rubble” remain in many neighborhoods from Helene, which haven’t been removed in time, and thus pose the danger of becoming “dangerous projectiles” from strong winds. These include cinder blocks, sheet metal, appliances, etc. Highways and airports are clogged as people try to flee the area and some airports in the southern part of the state are closed altogether. As of 6:00 p.m., there had been nine confirmed tornados in parts of South Florida. The location of landfall has not yet been exactly determined, but Tampa and surrounding areas were told to prepare for a “direct hit.”
