Hurricane Milton nears Florida coast as thousands evacuate

The storm oscillated in strength as it swept toward shore, rebounding to a Category 5 hurricane after dipping to Category 4 on Monday night. By the time it makes landfall late Wednesday, federal officials predicted, it will be a strong Category 3 hurricane with winds reaching 125 mph and could be significantly larger than it was as it passed over record-warm gulf waters. It appeared likely to come to shore as the most powerful storm to hit the highly vulnerable Tampa Bay region in more than a century.

“I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor told CNN Monday night, speaking of residents in her city. “This is literally catastrophic.”

Milton will strike many of the same areas of the Florida coast still reeling from Hurricane Helene’s winds and flooding less than two weeks ago. Helene passed through on its way to inundating western North Carolina and other states, killing more than 230 people, at least 27 of them in Florida. That storm also left trails of glass and nail-spiked planks that were only recently being gathered into mounds, which Milton could transform into perilous projectiles, DeSantis warned.

Helene sent a storm surge of five to seven feet into the Tampa Bay area, home to more than 3 million people. The surge caused by Milton may be twice that size, combining with extreme winds and heavy rains to form what St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch described as a triple threat that could bring an unexpected danger to downtown residents: the possible toppling of massive construction cranes that the city had too little time to dismantle.

A surge of more than 10 feet is possible along a 70-mile-plus swath of the coast from Tampa Bay to Venice, including Sarasota, the National Hurricane Center predicted. North and south of those regions could see five- to 10-foot surges, while Naples may be in line for four to six feet, the center said.

But small changes in the storm track could shift where the maximum surge occurs. If Milton strikes Tampa Bay head-on or comes ashore just to its north, the storm’s powerful winds from the southwest will send ashore a devastating ocean surge that engulfs low-lying communities. If Milton passes to the south, its counterclockwise circulation will mean that prevailing winds pass over Tampa from the land rather than water, pushing the tide out. Instead, areas to the south, from Sarasota to Fort Myers, would experience the gravest surge.

DeSantis said Florida is marshaling unprecedented resources to deal with Milton’s aftermath, even as he and other officials implore residents to heed evacuation orders. More than two dozen search-and-rescue teams were stationed in areas expected to be slammed by the storm, and more than 43,000 electrical linemen from as far away as California were getting in place to begin to restore power as quickly as feasible, he said. Workers were racing to clear debris from Helene, and about 5,000 National Guard troops were on duty — “probably the largest National Guard mobilization in advance of a storm in Florida history,” DeSantis said.

Amid the dire warnings, Floridians puzzled over how far to flee was far enough — or whether to flee at all. The menace of Milton’s size and strength, combined with the aftermath of Helene, appeared to multiply the exodus: Hotels hundreds of miles away in Georgia were packed with evacuees, and highways in that state were clogged with nearly three times as much traffic as usual.

In Sarasota, south of Tampa Bay, drivers lined up at the few remaining gas stations with fuel, and hotels filled with evacuees, many of whom were forced to leave barrier island communities for the second time in a month. Some who had sought shelter at a high school found themselves packing up for the second time in a day when city officials expanded evacuation zones, closing that center.

“I got gas and cash,” said Deborah Shaw, who had parked her RV in the school parking lot but now planned to head to a shelter at an elementary school that remained open. “I can take care of myself,” Shaw said, though she conceded that the storm’s path — which she was tracking on her phone — left her perplexed about where it would head and where she would be safe: “It’s finicky.”

In St. Petersburg, just across the bay from Tampa, residents said they were taking no chances. Mary Catok, 66, raced on Tuesday to load a U-Haul and head to a friend’s place on higher ground. The real estate agent had stayed in her three-bedroom home in the Shore Acres neighborhood during Helene, then watched as it filled with four feet of water, submerging her legs as she sat on the kitchen counter. She would not stay to see what Milton wrought.

“Five times I’ve been in the house” during major storms and floods, she said. “This time I’m not going to be in the house.”

Steve Roberts, a 62-year-old engineer in St. Petersburg, echoed that sentiment. The sixth-generation Floridian had also stuck it out for Helene, which sent rushing waters up the stairs of his home. Now Roberts appraised the hillocks of Helene debris up and down the waterfront street of Bayou Grande Boulevard — upended sofas, abandoned treadmills, discarded Frigidaires — and saw “missiles” soon to be lobbed by Milton. And he prepared to leave for Dade City, not knowing what he would come home to.

“I think all these houses, the non-elevated ones, are going to be teardowns,” Roberts said.

All along the coast, preparations for the worst scenarios unfolded. Schools were shuttered. Port Tampa Bay closed to shipping traffic Tuesday morning, while airlines added flights out of the region. Officials cut water service in some counties. Access to barrier islands was set to be severed Tuesday night. Supermarkets were scheduled to close Wednesday. Even the Florida Aquarium, in Tampa, was relocating animals and endangered coral — penguins and jellyfish to safer floors, coral juveniles and “broodstock” to facilities as far away as Georgia.

Collier County, in Florida’s southwest, said Tuesday that it had run out of sand that residents were using to protect their properties after giving out 500 tons, along with shovels and bags. Farther north, Hillsborough County had ended its sandbagging operations Monday.

Gas stations, meanwhile, were low on fuel, if they had it at all, complicating evacuation for some residents. As of late Tuesday morning, nearly 16 percent of stations statewide were out of fuel, and more than 43 percent were dry in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area, according to GasBuddy, an online tracking site.

The fuel shortages were making it hard for Hailey Berwick, 22, and her mother, Carol Newhart, to know what to do. They had been discussing options all morning, and even though the skies outside their Sarasota apartment were clear, they feared on Tuesday afternoon that it was too late to try to leave.

They had called hotels, but all the rooms were booked. They did not have a crate for their dog, which would be required to stay in a shelter, and they could not afford to buy one. They were hearing reports of drivers running out of gas while fleeing north or south on Interstate 75.

“If we try to leave, we might put ourselves in a bind,” said Newhart, 51, a home health aide. With trepidation, they decided to ride it out. “I’ve lived in Florida all of my life, and this is the most scared I’ve been,” Newhart said.

While much of the focus and worry remained on Florida’s west coast, officials in inland areas in the storm’s path were also exhorting residents to brace for widespread damage. In Orange County, home to Orlando, Mayor Jerry Demings said winds could top 110 mph, and some areas could experience as much as a foot of rain. He warned of power outages, felled trees and flooding.

Two years ago, Hurricane Ian — which made landfall with an even greater intensity than Milton is projected to bring — caused catastrophic destruction to Fort Myers Beach and other parts of the state’s coast, but it also battered many inland communities. Its massive rainfall caused ponds to swell far beyond their banks and creeks to become rushing rivers. It overwhelmed stormwater and sewage systems and brought unprecedented flooding to places far from the most visceral scenes of destruction along the gulf.

“This storm is going to go across the Florida peninsula, and it’s going to exit on the east coast of Florida into the Atlantic Ocean, likely still as a hurricane. So that is going to bring significant impacts all across the state,” DeSantis said Tuesday afternoon.

Hurricanes that strike the Gulf Coast of the United States typically approach from the south or east. Milton was taking an unusual course, approaching Florida more from the southwest.

Sweeping into the coast at a perpendicular angle helps maximize the amount of ocean water that a powerful storm can thrust ashore, officials said. The “extremely life-threatening” surge predicted by the National Hurricane Center is, in part, a consequence of this angle of approach.

In its grim warnings about Milton, the National Weather Service office in Tampa Bay noted that the last hurricane to directly hit Tampa Bay occurred more than 100 years ago, in October 1921, and also approached from the southwest. The Great Gale of 1848 took a similar track through the central and western Gulf of Mexico before demolishing the Tampa area with its most damaging known storm surge.

University of Tampa students Miranda Carver and Maddy Cortes were walking along the empty downtown sidewalks Tuesday looking for an open restaurant or any place that sold food. As many fellow students booked flights or drove out of town Monday, they decided to stay, but not in their small off-campus house. They were instead at a hotel built to withstand hurricane-force winds.

Their search for bread and coconut water came up dry. Instead they found themselves almost alone on what is usually a bustling downtown Tampa street. Cars occasionally rushed by, and one driver was charging his EV in a nearby parking lot, but otherwise they had the street to themselves. Windows were boarded up.

“This is eerie. It kind of feels like ‘The Purge’ in a really weird way,” Cortes said, referring to the 2013 dystopian horror film. “Everyone’s just taking all these precautions, and everyone’s leaving, and we’re stuck here now. We’ve just got to really hope and just pray. We’re just walking around, people are looking at us, like: Why are you out?”

In Estero, a village south of Fort Myers, a recreation center that normally hosts pickleball and volleyball matches had been turned into an evacuation center. Tara Warfield, 54, dropped off a vehicle before turning to a slew of other preparations — including gathering her eight cats, a dog, chickens and pigeons. She and her husband, who live in a 1980s mobile home on a lagoon in the village, were planning to ride out the storm in their truck and a U-Haul packed with belongings and parked in the center’s parking lot.

They had rebuilt their home after Ian, “and now we’re here again,” she said. But this was the last time, she said.

“I think we’re getting ready to go,” she said of her plans to move after this storm. She said she’d miss the nature around her home — dolphins, manatees, flying squirrels — but Milton was the last straw. “I just can’t keep doing this.”

Lori Rozsa in Tampa, Brady Dennis in Durham, N.C., and Ian Livingston, Matthew Cappucci, Anna Phillips, Azi Paybarah and Michelle Boorstein in Washington contributed to this report.