Monster hurricane Milton threatens an already battered Florida

The Category 4 Hurricane Milton is expected to grow larger on Oct 8 as it threatens Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida, where more than a million people have been ordered to evacuate from its path.

The densely populated west coast of Florida, still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Oct 9.

The US National Hurricane Centre projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than three million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.

With maximum sustained winds of 250kmh, Milton was downgraded from a Category 5 to a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale, according to the US National Hurricane Centre’s latest advisory early on Oct 8.

While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida, according to the hurricane centre. That means catastrophic damage will occur, including power outages expected to last days.

Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the Hurricane Centre said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than 24 hours.

Its path from west to east was also unusual, as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after travelling west and turning north.

“It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward and make landfall on the western coast of Florida,” said Dr Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. “This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest.”

The hurricane centre forecast storm surges of 3m to 4.5m along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.

Mr Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Centre, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Oct 9, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.

Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Mr Rhome told a news briefing on Oct 7.

As at 1am local time on Oct 8 (Singapore time 2pm), the eye of the storm was 105km north-east of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 840km south-west of Tampa, moving east at 15kmh.

While the eye of the storm appeared to have passed to the north of the Yucatan Peninsula, dangerous conditions were still expected to lash the region during the early hours of Oct 8.

“We ask you to be pay attention to the information issued by civil protection officials from the government of Mexico and Yucatan’s government as well and if you live in lowlands it is better to go to the shelters that have been already installed,” Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum said earlier.

The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, which has a population 1.2 million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.

In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.

Pinellas County, which includes St Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people.

Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations, including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.

With one final day for people to evacuate on Oct 8, local officials raised concerns of traffic jams and long lines at gas stations.

Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US south-east in the wake of Helene, a Category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on Sept 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states. REUTERS