Millions without power due to a storm

The Florida Coast Guard said Tuesday night that the Tampa Bay Tropical Storm is expected to become Category 5 by 5 p.m. ET and it will be a few days before the expected Landfall of Hurricane Milton

As of Wednesday night, people in Florida were running out of time to evacuate ahead of the expected landfall of Hurricane Milton.

As of 5 a.m. ET, Milton remained a Category 5 storm with maximum sustained wind speeds of 160 miles per hour, the National Hurricane Center said. It traveled at 14 mph and was 300 miles southwest of the city. Multiple hurricane, tropical storm and storm surge advisories are in effect in coastal areas in western Florida. The National Hurricane Center predicts the storm surge could get as high as 15 feet in some places, and rainfall totals could reach 18 inches.

While the storm has weakened considerably, various storm surge, hurricane and tropical storm advisories were still in effect for the area. A storm surge warning remained for the state’s west coast, from Bonita Beach northward to Middle of Longboat Key, including Charlotte Harbor, and from the Sebastian Inlet in the state to Altamaha Sound in Georgia, including the St. Johns River, the NHC said.

“Wherever the eye of the storm is, there will be impacts far beyond that,” he said Tuesday. “You should be executing your plan now. If you’re going to get out, get out now. You have some time today. You’ll be out of time very soon if you wait any longer.

Milton’s destructive power seen in the Tampa Bay Rays’ collapse and its connection to Hurricane Beryl, whose hurricane last year had 65 confirmed tornadoes

It would take authorities some time to assess the toll from Milton. But perhaps the most immediate visual expression of Milton’s destructive power was seen in St. Petersburg, where the roof of Tropicana Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays, was torn to shreds, NPR member station WUSF reported. Pieces of the fiberglass roof could be seen flapping in the wind. Just blocks away from there, a construction site crane collapsed.

The number of homes and businesses without power grew steadily overnight. By early Thursday morning, the number of customers without power had surpassed 3 million, according to poweroutage.us, with the highest number of outages reported in the western part of the state, including Tampa, St. Petersburg and Sarasota.

The Florida Division of Emergency Management encouraged residents to shelter in place and “be vigilant,” as floods, tornadoes and high winds were predicted.

It’s not full cloud cover, that’s why it is. “You’re able to get just enough heating instability that really allows more of these true supercell thunderstorms that you might see in a more typical severe environment over the Plains” to develop.

There were no confirmed deaths in the rest of the state at the news conference, according to the governor. We might as the day goes on.

Wednesday’s tornadoes were too early to say with certainty how strong they were. But, he added, “Visually and on radar, it certainly looks like we saw some strong tornadoes yesterday.”

“You can get stronger tornadoes in tropical cyclones, but it is rare,” Elliott said. “Usually tornadoes and tropical cyclones are EF-2 or less, but you can get stronger.”

Many tornadoes traveled from south to north when it was Milton that was moving. Elliott said this dynamic helps explain why conditions were so favorable for tornadoes on Wednesday.

Comparing Milton to other hurricanes associated with many tornadoes, Hurricane Beryl appears to have had 65 confirmed tornadoes earlier this year, putting it in the No. 5 spot if that number is finalized.

The storm was able to align its outer bands with the Florida Peninsula land mass on its eastward path. The timing also helped, as the clouds weren’t thick enough on the leading edges of the storm to keep the land from heating up and aiding storms.

The concentration in South Florida, along with the number of warnings we received in such a short period of time, were quite impressive.

In most cases a lot of tornado warnings would apply to a large area, rather than being confined to a few states.