Hurricane Milton is weakening slightly but remains a powerful storm that could hit Tampa and St. Petersburg directly once in a century, inundating the populous region with massive storm surges and turning debris from the Helene devastation 12 days ago into projectiles.
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Here’s the latest:
The University of South Florida’s football game against Memphis on Saturday has been postponed
The game in Tampa has been postponed to Saturday, October 12th.
The American Athletic Conference and teams will assess the conditions and overall situation following the storm to determine whether further adjustments need to be made, the school announced Tuesday.
The National Hurricane Center’s latest warning for Milton
The National Hurricane Center said at 11 a.m. Tuesday that Hurricane Milton was about 520 miles (835 km) southwest of Tampa. According to the hurricane center, maximum sustained winds were 150 mph (240 km/h) and moving east-northeast at a speed of 9 mph.
The center said the storm surge warning had been extended along Florida’s east coast south to Port Canaveral. The Bahamas government has issued a tropical storm warning for the far northwest of the Bahamas, including Grand Bahama Island, the Abacos and Bimini, the center said.
The hurricane was a Category 4 storm tardy Tuesday morning, the center said.
“While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is expected to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane as it makes landfall in Florida,” it said.
It’s a race against time to clear the debris as Hurricane Milton approaches
Nick Szabo’s fleet of excavators and dump trucks got to work around 6:30 a.m. Tuesday, racing against the clock to haul away the three-foot-high piles of soggy couches, appliances, mattresses and two-by-fours that line the site Streets in this residential area of Clearwater Beach – all left behind by Hurricane Helene.
“All this crap is going to be rockets,” he said, if they don’t get it out before Hurricane Milton. “It’s like a spear coming at you.”
Szabo said he was hired by a resident who was eager to assist clear the streets — and didn’t want to wait for overwhelmed city contractors to do the job.
His team has removed around 260 tonnes of rubble from 5pm on Monday and plans to continue working until 7pm on Tuesday.
“It feels good to help,” Szabo said.
A couple’s vacation has left them stranded in Florida as Milton approaches
It’s easily the worst vacation John Fedor and his wife Laura have ever had. After losing their phone on a Caribbean cruise, they missed their flight home to Philadelphia — and then also missed the flight they had rebooked Tuesday morning after the bus they were taking to Tampa airport was delayed.
“It was just hell,” Fedor said.
With the city’s airport closing its doors at 9 a.m. Tuesday, the Fedors are among those now stranded in this city because of the threat of a major hurricane the likes of which the Tampa Bay region has not seen in a century.
“We thought about driving home or taking the train home,” he said, but nothing worked out.
“We don’t really have a lot of options…we’re kind of stranded here.”
President Biden postpones trip to Germany and Angola because of hurricane
President Joe Biden is postponing a planned trip to Germany and Angola to stay at the White House and monitor Hurricane Milton as it slams into Florida’s Gulf Coast, the White House announced Tuesday morning.
Press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said the change was necessary “given the forecast path and strength” of the storm.
It was not clear when the trip might be postponed. Biden had promised to travel to Africa during his term, which ends in January.
An unusual hurricane season goes from extremely peaceful to record-breakingly busy, giving birth to Helene and Milton
Explosively strengthening Hurricane Milton is the latest spooky system to have what veteran hurricane scientists are calling the strangest storm season of their lives.
Going into this Atlantic hurricane season, forecasters said everything was pointing to an extremely busy year, and it started off that way when Beryl became the first storm on record to reach Category 5. Nothing else. There was record placid from August 20 – the classic start of peak hurricane season – to September 23, said hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach of Colorado State University.
Then between September 26 and October 6, five hurricanes appeared, more than double the aged record of two. On Sunday and Monday there were three hurricanes at the same time in October – something that had never happened before, Klotzbach said. In just 46.5 hours, Hurricane Milton went from a tropical storm with winds of 40 miles per hour to a top Category 5 hurricane with winds of 160 miles per hour and then grew even stronger.
(*4*) Klotzbach said. “You know, the season is obviously not over yet. We’ll see what pops up after Milton.”
▶ Read more about this unusual hurricane season.
Schools in Sarasota County that could be directly hit by Milton will remain closed all week
“We will let you know about school reopening as soon as possible after Hurricane Milton passes. Our facilities team will need time to safely conduct statewide assessments across all of our campuses to ensure our traditional public schools and offices are safe to welcome back students, teachers and staff,” the district said in a Facebook post.
The district also urged residents in evacuation zones to seek shelter. The county is setting up evacuation centers, but these should be considered a “last resort,” the county government said in a statement.
FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell says the agency is moving personnel and supplies into place ahead of Milton
And Criswell implored residents to listen to local officials for advice on what to do as the storm intensifies.
“This is an extremely dangerous hurricane,” Criswell said Tuesday morning. “I need people to listen to their local officials to get out of danger…People don’t have to go far. They just need to move inland.”
Authorities in the Mexican state of Yucatan reported only minor damage from Milton
The hurricane remained offshore early Tuesday. According to Yucatan Governor Joaquín Díaz, power lines, delicate poles and trees near the coast were downed and some compact thatched buildings were destroyed. However, he reported no deaths or injuries.
Are the residents ready?
While Florida is no stranger to storms, Tampa has not been in the direct path of a major hurricane in over a century.
During this time the area has grown explosively. Tens of thousands of Americans moved to the region during the COVID-19 pandemic, with many settling on barrier islands like Clearwater and St. Petersburg overlooking the Gulf’s normally placid, emerald waters. According to U.S. Census data, more than 51,000 people moved to the area between 2022 and 2023, making it the fifth-largest U.S. metropolitan area.
Long-term residents who have experienced numerous false alarms and near misses like Irma in 2017 may also be unprepared for a direct hit. A local legend holds that the blessings of the Native Americans who once called the region home and built mounds to keep out invaders largely protected the area from severe storms for centuries.
Kerry Emanuel, a meteorology professor at MIT, said a hurricane in Tampa is the worst-case “black swan” scenario that experts have worried about for years.
Control the path and force of hurricanes like Milton? Forget it, say scientists
Hurricanes remind humanity of the uncontrollable, tumultuous power of Earth’s weather.
Milton’s powerful push into Florida, just days after Helene devastated huge swaths of the Southeast, is likely leaving some in the region wondering whether they are being targeted. In some corners of the internet, Helene has already spread conspiracy theories and disinformation suggesting that the government has somehow aimed the hurricane at Republican voters.
In addition to ignoring common sense, such theories also ignore weather history, which shows that hurricanes hit many of the same areas as they have for centuries. They also assume that humans are capable of rapidly reshaping the weather, well beyond relatively minor efforts such as cloud formation.
“If meteorologists could stop hurricanes, we would stop hurricanes,” said Kristen Corbosiero, a professor of atmospheric and environmental sciences at the University of Albany. “If we could control the weather, we wouldn’t want the kind of death and destruction that happened.”
▶ Read more about the power of hurricanes.
How severe is Milton’s damage expected to be?
Florida’s entire Gulf Coast is particularly vulnerable to storm surges.
Hurricane Helene made landfall about 150 miles (240 kilometers) from Tampa in the Florida Panhandle and still caused drowning deaths in the Tampa area as waves were about 5 to 8 feet (1.5 to 2.5 meters) above normal tide level.
Forecasters warned of a possible storm surge of 8 to 12 feet (2.4 to 3.6 meters) in Tampa Bay. That’s the highest level ever predicted for the location and nearly double the levels reached two weeks ago during Helene, said Maria Torres, spokeswoman for the hurricane center.
The storm could also cause widespread flooding. Five to 10 inches (13 to 25 centimeters) of rain was forecast for mainland Florida and the Keys, with as much as 15 inches (38 centimeters) in some places.
Gov. Ron DeSantis is assuring residents there is enough fuel to get out of Hurricane Milton
“There is no shortage of fuel. “Despite long lines at gas stations, fuel continues to arrive in the state of Florida,” DeSantis said at a news conference Tuesday morning. He said officials are working with fuel companies to continue importing gasoline.
“You don’t have to get on the highway and drive far away,” DeSantis said. “You can evacuate dozens of miles; You don’t have to evacuate hundreds of miles away. You have options.”
DeSantis said the state helped evacuate more than 200 health care facilities in Milton’s path and that 36 county-run shelters were open.
