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.
More than 8 inches of rain pummeled Daytona Beach on Florida's east coast overnight, causing flash flooding Thursday morning.
The flooding and hurricane-force wind gusts are ongoing from Daytona Beach to Cape Canaveral.
Concerns over Milton and its effects on Florida also forced the cancellation of Friday's NBA preseason game in Orlando between the Magic and the New Orleans Pelicans.
The fabric roof over the home of baseball's Tampa Bay Rays was ripped to shreds after Hurricane Milton came ashore in Florida, bringing wind gusts exceeding 100 mph and flooding parts of the state.
The game won't be rescheduled. Orlando was playing at San Antonio on Wednesday night and was scheduled to return to Central Florida on Thursday.
Those plans are now in flux because of the storm, which made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida, on Wednesday night.
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.
