Hurricane Milton quickly grew into a Category 3 hurricane overnight, days before an expected landfall on the west coast of Florida, where a storm surge of up to 10 feet is expected.
Most of Florida’s Gulf Coast is under a hurricane or tropical storm watch, although the latest forecast still calls for the storm to make landfall near Sarasota sometime late Wednesday.
The exact location of landfall is difficult to determine this far out and will continue to move back and forth as the National Hurricane Center refines its projections. However, the area just south of the eye is expected to see the worst storm surge, which could see as much as 12 feet of water above the ground.
For many places on the Gulf Coast, that could be worse than the devastating Hurricane Helene, which hit just under two weeks ago.
Some mandatory evacuations have already been declared, but more are expected Monday and Tuesday, ahead of Milton’s arrival.
On Sunday, Kevin Guthrie, director of the Florida Department of Emergency Management, said the state was preparing for “the largest evacuation we’ve seen since, most likely, 2017’s Hurricane Irma.”
At 7 a.m., the National Hurricane Center said Milton was already a Category 3 hurricane with sustained winds of 125 mph, ahead of schedule. The latest forecast calls for further strengthening, to Category 4, in the super-warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.
It also calls for Milton to move down to Category 3 before landfall, a move that could bring slightly weaker winds but also significantly increase the size of the storm’s wind field, allowing damaging effects to spread over a wider area.
