Florida residents in Milton’s path have been told to get out while they can.
Gov. Ron DeSantis and others warned people Tuesday to finish their storm preparations and evacuate as Hurricane Milton approached the state as a Category 5 storm.
“Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida,” the National Hurricane Center said in a forecast discussion.
The storm’s wind field was forecast to double by the time it moved across the Gulf of Mexico and hit Florida.
The National Hurricane Center predicts landfall late Wednesday, but an NBC News forecast predicts landfall slightly later, between 2 a.m. and 6 a.m. Thursday.
Storm surge warnings covered almost the entirety of Florida’s western coast, and in an area between Bonita Beach and Chassahowitzka, the inundation will be more than 5 feet, National Hurricane Center Director Michael Brennan said Tuesday.
In a stretch that includes Pinellas County, Sarasota and Tampa Bay, “somewhere in this region is going to experience 10 to 15 feet of inundation about ground level,” he said.
The state was preparing for a potentially devastating storm. Power line workers from as far away as California were headed to Florida to help resolve what forecasters said could be extended power outages, DeSantis said.
In Pinellas County, areas with half a million people living there have been ordered to evacuate. The city of St. Petersburg expects to get winds of 100 mph, which is greater than what it got during Hurricane Helene.
It was less than two weeks ago that Helene flooded parts of the western Florida coast before it made landfall in the Big Bend region as a Category 4 storm, where it would continue on a path that devastated parts of the Southeast.
Milton will track across Florida from west to east. In Orlando and the surrounding area, forecasters warned of up to 15 inches of rain and said the city and the region face an “extreme flooding rain threat.”