TAMPA, Fla. (AP) — Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida as a Category 3 storm Wednesday, pounding the coast with ferocious winds of over 100 mph (160 kph) and producing a series of tornadoes around the state. Tampa avoided a direct hit.
The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph) as it roared ashore 8:30 p.m. near Siesta Key, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said.
Siesta Key is a prosperous strip of white-sand beaches that's home to 5,500 people about 70 miles (112 kilometers) south of Tampa. The Tampa Bay area has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in more than a century, but the storm was still bringing a potentially deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St. Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.
Heavy rains were also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday. More than 1 million homes and businesses were without power Wednesday night in Florida, according to poweroutage.us , which tracks utility reports.
The highest number of outages were in Sarasota County and neighboring Manatee County. About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said. Milton slammed into a Florida region still reel.
