Hurricane Milton crashes into Florida with 120mph winds - destroying homes and leaving millions without power
Milton has also caused at least 27 tornadoes to rip through Florida so far - with 11 deaths reported.
Thursday 10 October 2024 20:31, UK
Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida with winds of 120mph before battering coastal areas and producing at least 27 tornadoes across the state.
The Category 3 storm roared ashore near Siesta Key in Sarasota County around 8.30pm local time on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.
However, Milton's winds weakened to 90mph overnight, making it a lower Category 1 storm, the NHC added.
Hurricane Milton latest: Follow live updates
At least 11 people have been killed as a result of Hurricane Milton.
St Petersburg police said there were two storm-related deaths in the city, according to our partner network NBC.
One death was a "medical" incident and the other "was someone that was found in a park" with a cause of death pending.
Volusia County Sheriff Michael J Chitwood confirmed three people died in his jurisdiction, NBC reported, with one having "died after a tree fell".
Officials reported at least five people had died in the St Lucie area during the storm. A tree fell on a vehicle in Citrus county, killing the driver.
About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said.
The hurricane also knocked out power for more than three million homes and businesses in the state as of early Thursday, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The highest number of outages were in Sarasota County and neighbouring Manatee County.
Tampa Bay, where nearly everybody on the west coast of Florida lives, has avoided a direct hit but a storm surge is expected to crash into the densely populated cities of Tampa and St Petersburg in the area.
A storm surge is also expected to hit the coastal cities of Sarasota and Fort Myers further south.
The hurricane shredded the fabric roof of the Tropicana Field stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, in St Petersburg.
Meanwhile, a crane collapsed into a building in the city, which recorded more than 16 inches of rain.
It comes as people in the city have been unable to get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service.
Biden warns of 'dangerous conditions'
Heavy rains are also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday.
At the time of landfall, nearly 100,000 people were in evacuation centres across Florida, Sky News' US partner network NBC reported, citing the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
President Joe Biden tweeted to urge anyone impacted by the hurricane to "stay inside and off the roads".
"Downed power lines, debris, and road washouts are creating dangerous conditions," he said. "Help is on the way, but until it arrives, shelter in place until your local officials say it's safe to go out."
Milton has also caused at least 27 tornadoes to rip through Florida so far, the National Weather Service (NWS) in the US said.
Officials said the NWS was still working to confirm all the reports due to the treacherous conditions in the state.
Meteorology professor Victor Gensini said the ferocity of the tornadoes seen during Hurricane Milton's approach was "definitely out of the ordinary".
He said: "Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they're usually weak... There's an incredible amount of swirling going on."
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'Daylight will reveal the full impact'
Reporting from Tampa overnight, as the storm made landfall 60 miles away, Sky News US correspondent James Matthews said you could feel its "devastating power".
"You can hear it in the roar, and sense it. You can feel it in the wind," he said.
"They have called this a historic hurricane. The strongest to hit this part of Florida for more than 100 years.
"Reduced from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm by the time it hit, but that doesn't mean that it is not extremely powerful, extremely dangerous, and will have, one imagines, a devastating impact.
"This is all happening in the hours of darkness, daylight will reveal the full impact of Hurricane Milton."
Milton slammed into a Florida region still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which caused heavy damage to beach communities with storm surges and killed a dozen people in Pinellas County alone.
Animals at Tampa's zoo took shelter in hurricane-hardened buildings.
Once past Florida, Milton should weaken over the west of the Atlantic Ocean, possibly dropping below hurricane strength on Thursday night, but storm surges will still pose a threat to the state's Atlantic coast.