Hurricane Milton made landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening, bringing powerful winds, deadly storm surge and potential flooding to much of the state.
Milton drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters, twice reaching Category 5 status as it made its way to Florida, before being downgraded to Category 3.
The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph when it roared ashore near Siesta Key, Florida, at 8:30 p.m. local, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center 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.
Nearly 700,000 customers were without power in Florida early Wednesday night as Milton pummeled the state, according to PowerOutage.us.
Tampa Electric, Florida Power & Light Company and Duke Energy were reporting some of the largest outages as the hurricane made landfall about 68 miles south of Tampa.
Many Florida energy companies warned customers in advance to prepare for outages caused by the storm. Duke Energy Florida said in a statement earlier Wednesday that it was staging resources along the outside of the hurricane’s projected path to respond to outages as soon as weather and other conditions allow.
In a video statement released shortly after Milton made landfall, US President Joe Biden said, “Tonight, my message to the people of Florida and all of the impacted states is: We’ve got your backs.”
“And Kamala and I will be there for as long as it takes to rescue, to recover, and to rebuild.”