Hurricane Milton Departed Florida Early This Morning, Leaving An Incredible Mess Behind

The fury and intense rains of Hurricane Milton in
Tampa, Florida last night. Photo by Julio Cortez AP

To nobody's surprise, much of Florida is trashed this morning, raked by powerful Hurricane Milton which crossed the state west to east overnight. 

The hurricane made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, a barrier island just off the coast of South Sarasota, at around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday with top winds of 120 mph.  

It exited into the Atlantic Ocean near Cape Canaveral with top winds of around 85 mph shortly before 5 a.m. today. 

It was simultaneously horrifying and fascinating to watch events unfold in Florida as Hurricane Milton approached the state, moved ashore, then through the peninsula. 

We're only just beginning to understand the extent of damage, and we don't have a reliable death toll yet, but we do know Hurricane Milton proved fatal to some people. 

At least 3 million homes were without power this morning in Florida.

There's a lot going on and a lot of updates. I'll get to some of them in this morning's post and will do more posts today as warranted .

TAMPA/ST. PETE

There was good news and bad news as the events unfolded, and sometimes good news turned into bad news. 

A few hours before landfall, it appeared Hurricane Milton might hit near Tampa Bay, which would have caused a worst case scenario storm surge in the bay, which is surrounded by intense urban development. 

Shortly before landfall, Milton made a leftward jog, so it made landfall perhaps 25 miles south of Tampa, preventing much of a storm surge in the bay.   

However, that put Tampa and St. Petersburg in the most intense northern eyewall of Hurricane Milton, which gave them a ferocious windstorm and an even more intense wall of rainfall. They never got a break from the eye of the storm, either, because that passed to the south of the two cities. 

Tampa had close to a foot of rain with Milton. St. Petersburg reported a whopping 18.54 inches.  At 9 p.m., St. Petersburg reported winds of 49 mph gusting to 91 mph with 5.09 inches of rain in just the previous hour. 

Video from downtown Tampa showed absolutely zero visibility it was raining so hard. By my estimation, visibility would be better in the most intense Vermont blizzard you can imagine than it was in Tampa, because it was raining so hard. 

As you can guess, flooding is incredibly serious in and near Tampa and St. Petersburg, despite the lack of a major storm surge. 

The roof of Tropicana Field in Tampa blew off. The stadium
had been being used as a staging area for National 
Guard troops and electrical repair crews. 

There heavy rain crossed the entire state to the Atlantic Coast, where Vero Beach reported 9.1 inches of rain. 

.In downtown St. Petersburg, a large crane from a construction site fell onto a building housing the Tampa Bay Times newspaper.

Max Chesnes, a reporter at the paper, posted on X:

"A crane is blocking the road and several stories up, smoke billows out of the building from it appears the crane fell. Smell of gas in the air and you can hear alarms."

The roof of Tropicana Field which normally houses the Tampa Bay Rays blew off.  The structure was meant to be a shelter and staging area for National Guard troops and electrical workers who are in the area to help and to start restoring power. Nobody was seriously hurt, but I'm unsure what they're going to do now with these workers. 

SARASOTA AND ELSEWHERE

In Sarasota, winds gusted to 102 mph. The wind was strongest in the second half of the storm, after the eye had passed. Windows were smashed out of high rises by the wind in downtown Sarasota and Bradenton, so there has to be incredible water damage inside those buildings from all the wind driven rain that came in. 

Near where Hurricane Milton made landfall and points south, there was some pretty horrible storm surges. That was something that forecasters had expected, but it's terrible nonetheless. 

As of early this morning, I don't have a lot of information on storm surge damage. That was going to be assessed as daylight arrived, so detailed reports weren't in yet as of 7:30 a.m today. 

We do know that in Sarasota, right after the calm eye passed, winds picked up to those near 100 mph gusts and a storm surge immediately shoved into the city, including at least parts of downtown. NBC News reported a ten foot storm surge around Sarasota. 

Wind and water have since calmed down almost completely in Sarasota, but the county government is continuing to tell people to shelter in place, as it's still to dangerous to go out with all the debris and lingering flooding. 

Rescue crews were just beginning to head out to likely devastated barrier islands and low lying area of Bradenton, Sarasota, Venice, Punta Gorda, Fort Myers and other communities likely slammed by storm surges. 

 Another odd thing about Hurricane Milton was the intense tornado outbreak during the day Wednesday as the storm's outer rain bands moved through.  There were no fewer than 136 tornado warnings issued in Florida Wednesday. So far at least 45 tornadoes have been confirmed. 

Some of the them were strong, Midwestern-style twisters that caused a lot of damage and reportedly caused some deaths in a neighborhood near Fort Pierce.

As noted, assessments of how bad things got were only just beginning this morning. I'm hoping as we learn more details it turns out to be not as bad as feared. Fingers crossed.