13 people killed | At least 150 tornadoes reported across Florida
Hurricane Milton barreled into the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday after plowing across Florida, pounding cities with ferocious winds and rain, and whipping up a barrage of tornadoes. It caused at least 25 deaths and compounded the misery wrought by Helene while sparing Tampa a direct hit.
The storm tracked to the south in the final hours and made landfall as a Category 3 storm Wednesday night in Siesta Key, about 70 miles south of Tampa. While it caused a lot of damage and water levels may continue to rise for days, Gov. Ron DeSantis said it was not "the worst-case scenario."
Hurricane Milton brought powerful winds, a dangerous storm surge and flooding to much of Florida after making landfall along the Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm.
Here's a look at the damage from the storm.
More than 3 million customers are without power in Florida.
More than 50,000 linemen have been pre-staged across Florida to restore power, Gov. Ron DeSantis said.
Hurricane Milton's heavy rains sparked a flash-flood emergency for the Tampa Bay area.
Tampa has recorded 1 foot of rain, while Lakeland -- about 35 miles inland from Tampa -- saw 10 inches of rain.
Wind gusts climbed to 97 mph in Tampa and 102 mph at the Sarasota Bradenton International Airport as Milton slammed the coast.
Multiple powerful tornadoes ripped across Florida hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday, tearing off roofs, overturning vehicles and sucking debris into the air as the black V-shaped columns moved through.
Deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on Florida's Atlantic Coast, but local authorities did not specify how many residents had been killed.
By Wednesday evening, more than 130 tornado warnings associated with Milton had been issued by National Weather Services offices in Florida.
The appearance of tornadoes before and during hurricanes isn't unusual, scientists say, but the twisters' ferocity was.
"It's definitely out of the ordinary," said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. "Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they're usually weak. What we saw today was much closer to what we see in the Great Plains in the spring."
Tornadoes spawned by hurricanes and tropical storms most often occur in the right-front quadrant of the storm, but sometimes they can also take place near the storm's eyewall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The heat and humidity present in the atmosphere during such storms and changes in wind direction or speed with height, known as wind shear, contribute to their likelihood.
"There's an incredible amount of swirling going on," Gensini said of the conditions that allowed for the twisters to grow. "Those tornadoes were just in a very favorable environment."
The warming of the oceans by climate change is making hurricanes more intense, but Gensini said he did not know of any connection between human-caused warming and the deadly tornadoes that Floridians experienced with Milton.
Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said he wasn't sure whether Milton had spawned a record number of tornados, but he pointed out that only 64 Florida tornado warnings were associated with Hurricane Ian, which hit the Tampa Bay area as a massive storm in 2022.
Florida has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state. But they're usually not as severe as those in Midwest and Plains. However, a big outburst of powerful twisters killed 42 people and injured over 260 in Central Florida in the space of a few hours in February 1998.
Hurricane Milton is now heading out into the Atlantic Ocean as a Category 1 hurricane, having completed its swing across Florida.
The eye of the storm is now passing past Cape Canaveral, having taken less than eight hours to make its way across the Florida peninsula.
Wind speed remains at around 85 mph, with movement northeast at 18 mph.
With its mighty strength and its dangerous path, Hurricane Milton powered into a very rare threat flirting with experts' worst fears.
Warm water fueled amazingly rapid intensification that took Milton from a minimal hurricane to a massive Category 5 in less than 10 hours. It weakened, but quickly bounced back. And when its winds briefly reached 180 mph, its barometric pressure, a key measurement for a storm's overall strength, was among the lowest ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico this late in the year.
At its most fierce, Milton almost maxed out its potential intensity given the weather factors surrounding it.
"Everything that you would want if you're looking for a storm to go absolutely berserk is what Milton had," Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach said.
Milton also grew so potent because it managed to avoid high-level cross winds that often decapitate storms, especially in autumn. As Milton neared Florida it hit those winds, called shear, which ate away at its strength, as meteorologists had forecasted.
