Hurricane Milton headed toward Florida as a major hurricane Tuesday, but where exactly is it expected to hit and when?
Milton has started weakening slightly but remains a ferocious storm that could land a once-in-a-century direct hit on Tampa and St. Petersburg.
The National Hurricane Center said at 11 a.m. Tuesday that Hurricane Milton was about 520 miles southwest of Tampa. It had maximum sustained winds of 150 mph and was moving in an east-northeast direction at 9 mph, the hurricane center said.
The center said a storm surge warning has been extended southward along the East Coast of Florida to Port Canaveral. The government of the Bahamas has issued a Tropical Storm Watch for the extreme northwestern Bahamas, including Grand Bahama Island, the Abacos, and Bimini, the center said.
The hurricane was a Category 4 storm at late morning Tuesday, the center said.
“While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” it said.
Where is Hurricane Milton hitting and which counties are under evacuation orders?
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The entire Gulf Coast of Florida is especially vulnerable to storm surge.
Hurricane Helene came ashore some 150 miles away from Tampa in the Florida Panhandle and still managed to cause drowning deaths in the Tampa area due to surges of around 5 to 8 feet above normal tide levels.
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Forecasters warned of a possible 8- to 12-foot storm surge in Tampa Bay. That’s the highest ever predicted for the location and nearly double the levels reached two weeks ago during Helene, hurricane center spokesperson Maria Torres said.
The storm could also bring widespread flooding. Five to 10 inches of rain was forecast for mainland Florida and the Keys, with as much as 15 inches expected in some places.
The first alerts notifying residents of Pinellas, Manatee, Pasco, Charlotte, Citrus and Hillsborough counties in Florida of a hurricane warning and storm surge warning went out via email, text message and phone call beginning at about 5:10 p.m. EDT (4:10 p.m. CT), according to messages received by The Associated Press. That includes popular destinations like Naples, Marco Island, Bonita Springs, Fort Myers, Punta Gorda and more.
The hurricane warning said the impacts of Milton could be “devastating to catastrophic.”
The alerts warned that sturdy buildings could suffer complete roof and wall failures, and that damage could make some areas "uninhabitable for weeks or months.”
According to Florida's Division of Emergency Management, the following counties have "mandatory" evacuation orders as of 11 a.m. Tuesday:
- Charlotte County
- Citrus County
- Collier County
- Hernando County
- Hillsborough County
- Lee County
- Levy County
- Manatee County
- Pasco County
- Pinellas County
- Sarasota County
- St. Johns County
- Volusia County
See the latest list here.
When will Hurricane Milton make landfall?
As of 5:30 a.m. Tuesday, Milton, in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula near Cancun, was listed as a Category 4 storm. It was moving to the east at 12 miles-per-hour, with 155 mph winds, NBC Meteorologist Alicia Roman said.
According to Roman, Milton could re-intensify Tuesday -- once again becoming at Category 5 storm before weakening again -- as it slowly churns toward Florida's Big Bend region.
"The big question is, will it make landfall as a Category 4 or 3," Roman said, noting that models were going back and forth.
"Nonetheless, it will be a very destructive storm with a storm surge of up to 20 feet high," Roman said, of how high waves could get. "Think of a wall of water."
Once it hits Florida, Milton is expected to pass through the state and impact the eastern side around 1 p.m. Thursday, Roman said, though it was expected to be downgraded at that time even more, to a Category 1.
"Still just causing so much chaos and havoc across Florida's Big Bend area once again," Roman said, noting the area was just ravaged by Hurricane Helene.
By the evening hours Tuesday, the storm will be moving away from Mexico and toward the Florida coast, impacting western portions of Cuba as it churns across the Gulf as a powerful hurricane.
More rain will also start pushing into Florida out ahead of the hurricane, with flood watches and warnings likely as the day wears on.
By the late morning hours Wednesday, tropical storm-force winds are expected to arrive across most of the state, with heavy rain also impacting a wide swath of the state from the panhandle all the way down to the Florida Keys.
The storm is expected to weaken as it approaches the state, but will still be considered a major hurricane by the time it makes landfall, according to current estimates.
The storm is expected to make landfall around 1 a.m. It could do so near heavily populated areas of the state near Tampa and St. Petersburg, according to estimates.
By Thursday morning, the bulk of the storm is expected to have passed over the Florida peninsula, but it’s likely still going to be socking the area with rain, and could cause flooding issues along the Atlantic coast.
The heaviest rains are currently expected across the middle portions of the state.
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What makes Hurricane Milton ‘unusual'? How the rapidly changing storm is different
It's not uncommon for hurricanes to threaten the Florida coast in October, but the rapidly evolving Hurricane Milton is not quite the norm, experts say.
Milton is a bit atypical since it formed so far west and is expected to cross the entire southern Gulf, according to Daniel Brown, a hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center.
“It’s not uncommon to get a hurricane threat in October along the west coast of Florida, but forming all the way in the southwest Gulf and then striking Florida is a little bit more unusual,” Brown said. Most storms that form in October and hit Florida come from the Caribbean, not the southwestern Gulf, he said.
Milton "rapidly" intensified to a dangerous Category 5 storm in a matter of hours, threatening a dangerous storm surge in Tampa Bay and setting the stage for potential mass evacuations less than two weeks after a catastrophic Hurricane Helene swamped the coastline.
MORE: Hurricane Milton approaches limits of what Earth's atmosphere can produce
The increase from a Category 4 to a Category 5 happened just before 11 a.m. as Milton had maximum sustained winds of 160 mph, the National Hurricane Center said.
Adding to the unexpected elements is the location of where Milton could make landfall.
It’s the “black swan” worst case scenario that MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel and other hurricane experts have worried about for years.
Part of it is that for some reason – experts say it’s mostly luck with a bit of geography – Tampa hasn’t been smacked with a major hurricane since the deadly 1921 hurricane that had 11 feet (3.3 meters) of storm surge that inundated downtown Tampa, though there wasn’t much to the city at the time, Emanuel said. Since then, a metropolis has grown and it’s full of people who think they’ve lived through big storms when they haven’t, he said.
“It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,” Emanuel, who has studied hurricanes for 40 years, said. “I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.”
He said the whole basin is shaped and low-lying so it’s quite susceptible to flooding.
What is the highest category hurricane?
Hurricane categories are based on what is known as the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
The rating categorizes hurricanes on a scale of 1 to 5 based on sustained wind speeds, according to the National Weather Service.
"This scale estimates potential property damage," the NWS reports. "Hurricanes reaching Category 3 and higher are considered major hurricanes because of their potential for significant loss of life and damage. Category 1 and 2 storms are still dangerous, however, and require preventative measures."
In a Category Five storm, "a high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse," according to the scale.
"Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas. Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months," the description states.
Earlier this year, some experts proposed adding a Category 6 to the ranking for storms with winds that exceed 192 miles per hour, though no such category has been officially created so far.
Several experts told The Associated Press they don't think that category is necessary. They said it could even give the wrong signal to the public because it's based on wind speed, while water is by far the deadliest killer in hurricanes.
What causes a hurricane?
A hurricane is a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 74 mph or higher that typically registers as a Category 1 or 2 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
"Hurricanes are powerhouse weather events that suck heat from tropical waters to fuel their fury. These violent storms form over the ocean, often beginning as a tropical wave—a low pressure area that moves through the moisture-rich tropics, possibly enhancing shower and thunderstorm activity," the National Weather Service reports. "As this weather system moves westward across the tropics, warm ocean air rises into the storm, forming an area of low pressure underneath. This causes more air to rush in. The air then rises and cools, forming clouds and thunderstorms. Up in the clouds, water condenses and forms droplets, releasing even more heat to power the storm."
A Category 1 storm has sustained wind speeds between 74 mph and 95 mph, and a Category 2 storm is between 96 mph and 110 mph.
A major hurricane is a tropical cyclone with maximum sustained winds of 111 mph or higher that is classified as Category 3, 4 or 5.
