Hurricane Milton makes landfall in Florida

The National Hurricane Center said Hurricane Milton has made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida as an “extremely dangerous” Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening.

The NHC said the storm had sustained winds of up to 120 mph as it warned of a life-threatening storm surge, extreme winds and flash flooding in the central Florida peninsula.

As of 8 p.m. ET, the NHC said the storm was about 20 miles west southwest of Sarasota and about 130 miles southwest of Orlando. A storm surge warning is in effect for the Florida west coast, including Tampa.

Milton had been a Category 5 storm on Monday, but had dropped down to a Category 4 on Wednesday morning. The NHC had previously predicted the storm would remain a hurricane as it crossed the Florida peninsula.

Earlier Wednesday, several tornadoes and heavy rain hit south-central Florida as residents rushed to make last-minute preparations.

Milton rapidly intensified as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico due to the heat of the gulf’s surface waters. When a storm forms into a hurricane it absorbs energy from the heat in surface waters and, with 2024 on track to have the warmest average global air temperature on record, Milton’s ability to grow stronger in such a short amount of time was “a near-certainty,” according to physical oceanographer Gregory Foltz at the U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

Millions of people in 15 counties are under mandatory evacuation orders. The Federal Emergency Management Agency wrote Wednesday: “Your life is at serious risk if you don’t take action immediately — every second counts.”

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said people near the coast still have time to evacuate inland and recommended they head to one of the 149 general population shelters open throughout the state.

“The current total shelter population is just 31,000 individuals. We have room in those shelters for a total population of almost 200,000 individuals. So there is space available in these shelters,” DeSantis said in a storm briefing Wednesday morning. He said he expects more people to head toward shelters Wednesday afternoon and night.

DeSantis also said the Florida Highway Patrol has facilitated 106 long-distance fuel tanker escorts to transport close to one million gallons of gasoline into Tampa and other areas.

Gas stations around the state have already run out of fuel as people attempt to either leave the state or have fuel on stock for at-home generators. Around 24% of the state’s 7,900 gas stations are currently without fuel as of…