Florida coast facing historic flood threat from Hurricane Milton
Al Jazeera
The hurricane is headed for Tampa Bay, one of the most vulnerable areas of the country to flooding from storm surge.
Hurricane Milton has weakened but remains a major Category 4 hurricane in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, threatening to flood the west coast of Florida with historic storm surge.
Almost the entirety of the west coast of Florida was under a hurricane or tropical storm warning on Tuesday as the storm’s 230km/h (145mph) winds spun towards Tampa Bay, one of the largest urban areas of the state, sucking energy from the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters.
A massive evacuation is already under way as residents of the Tampa Bay area head inland, seeking shelter after Milton rapidly strengthened from a tropical storm to a major Category 5 hurricane on Monday.
“This is the real deal here with Milton,” the mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor, told a news conference. “If you want to take on Mother Nature, she wins 100 percent of the time.”
In an interview with CNN, Castor issued a dire warning to residents of her city. “This is literally catastrophic and I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re going to die,” she said.
