Florida breathes sigh of relief as Hurricane Milton causes relatively little damage — despite 3M powerless and 5 dead
By Jack Morphet, Isabel Keane,
10 hours ago
SIESTA KEY, Florida — Floridians breathed a sigh of relief Thursday as Hurricane Milton was downgraded to a Category 1 storm and began to churn toward the Atlantic Ocean, leaving behind 3 million people who were stuck without power and at least five people confirmed dead .
Despite the damage, Florida avoided what could have been a debilitating hit from a storm that was at one point the second most powerful ever recorded in the Gulf Coast.
“The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario,” Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a briefing early Thursday.
Debris still littered Midnight Pass Road in Siesta Key early Thursday morning, but there were no signs of roofs ripped off homes or surge flooding in Siesta Key, and only a few roads flooded with about a foot of water, locals told The Post.
“This was not the storm they said it was going to be. It still sucked but nothing like they projected it to be,” Andrea Shackelford, 37, a bartender at Clayton’s Siesta Grille told The Post on Thursday.
“This is a good outcome,” said Shackelford, who lives 1.5 miles inland from Siesta Key in Gulfgate.
Shackelford said the most shocking part of the storm had been the sound of the wind howling.
“The noise was piercing. I couldn’t believe how fierce the noise was. It started around 8 p.m. and lasted until 2 a.m. and kept coming in bands,” she added.
Fred Brown, 63, who lives about a mile inland and also works at Clayton’s also anticipated worse out of Milton.
“The damage is devastating — this city hasn’t had a direct hit in 100 years — but I expected it to be worse. It’s devastating for the people but I don’t think it’s catastrophic,” Brown said.
Brown seemed to think the restaurant sandbagging helped keep flood water at bay, noting they were flooded by 18 inches during Hurricane Helene just weeks earlier.
“We foamed in the door seams with expanding foam, then put gorilla tape over that, then a 4mm plastic sheet, then we sandbagged and put our storm shutters up,” he explained.
Daina Huggins, 56, who sheltered with her three little dogs overnight inside a closet at her Gulfgate home, said she was surprised her home was not damaged in the storm — especially since a carport across the street collapsed.
“With the eye hitting Siesta Key first, I wasn’t expecting buildings to be up. I expected the damage to be a lot worse than it is,” Huggins said. “It’s eerie but we’re blessed it’s not a lot worse.”
By Thursday afternoon, Milton was centered off the state’s Atlantic coastline about 10 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral early Thursday morning with maximum sustained winds of about 85mph — a far cry from the powerful 120 mph gusts that rocked Florida’s Gulf Coast when the then-Category 3 storm made landfall in Siesta Key, a barrier island town off Sarasota, around 8:30 p.m. Wednesday.
Still, the storm brought chaos and destruction to much of Florida’s Gulf Coast, with wind gusts exceeding 100 mph and 13-foot storm surges inundating some communities, leaving over 3 million homes and businesses without power still Thursday morning, according to PowerOutages.us .
The damaging storm ripped roofs off of buildings, including at Tropicana Field, home to the Tampa Bay Rays, and about a dozen devastating tornadoes spawned in its wake.
Five people died following twisters that tore through St. Lucie County, officials said. The fatalities were reported in the Spanish Lakes Country Club Village, a retirement community in Fort Pierce, WPBF News reported .
“We’re in search and rescue mode,” Erick Gill, St. Lucie County’s Public Information Officer said. “We had two confirmed tornadoes but maybe a dozen in a two-hour period. It takes a while to confirm.”
Florida’s I-75 was littered with debris and broken-off road signs that blew into the road overnight, a Post reporter on the scene reported.
At least one car was abandoned and overturned on the southbound side of the usually busy interstate, which was down from three lanes to two due to downed trees.
There was also an 18-wheeler snaggled in the road barrier just north of Manatee River on Thursday.
Thankfully, however, officials in hard-hit Sarasota and Tampa Bay — where catastrophic flooding was forecast — said the storm’s impact was not as bad as they had feared.
“We’ll have storm surge damage but nothing like it could have been. It could have been catastrophic for Tampa Bay,” Mayor Jane Castor said Thursday.
Similarly, Sarasota Mayor Liz Alpert told MSNBC the storm’s impact was not as bad on the mainland as expected, but that authorities still had to assess the Barrier Islands.
While there were plenty of power outages, there were no emergency calls from residents, Alpert added.
“That’s really unusual. Nobody called for a rescue. So my sense is they must have evacuated,” she said.
DeSantis said workers were trying to clear debris from the storm overnight, adding that President Biden’s administration had agreed to all of Florida’s requests for emergency assistance.
“We’ll survey the damage and get people on their feet,” DeSantis said. “We’ll get through this.”
“Our state is a peninsula in the middle of a tropical environment. I mean, we are just built to be able to respond to hurricanes,” he added.
Milton held onto hurricane status as it crossed the Florida peninsula overnight, and was churning northeast at about 20 18 mph as it headed away from Florida the National Hurricane Center said in an update.
“As Hurricane #Milton continues to move offshore, remain cautious. Dangerous tropical storm force winds, flooding & storm surge are impacting the East Coast & Central FL throughout the morning. Avoid flooded areas at all costs & continue to follow all weather alerts,” the state’s division of emergency management warned on X.
Bands of heavy rain and powerful wind gusts continue to pound parts of the state, especially eastern areas where wind gusts were as high as 92 mph along the Atlantic coast, Fox Weather reported.
Flash flood warnings for heavy rainfall are also in effect for parts of central Florida, but Floridians can expect conditions to ease throughout the day as Milton pushes out to sea.
The storm also brought heavy rainfall and storm surges that caused dangerous flooding in some coastal areas.
St. Petersburg, Florida, recorded over five inches of rain in an hour along with a gust to 90 mph in that hour. Meanwhile, parts of downtown Tampa and St. Petersburg flooded after getting over 17 inches of rain.
Water levels rose to over 8 feet near Sarasota close to landfall Wednesday evening while a storm surge of 3 to 6 feet was recorded from Naples to Charlotte Harbor.
Instead of the anticipated 15-foot storm surges, Tampa saw water levels fall by around 5 feet due to blowout winds. Meanwhile, Naples saw a storm surge of nearly 6 feet.
Still, powerful winds rocked both Tampa and St. Petersburg, even tearing the fabric roof off Tropicana Field. The state’s emergency management department had planned to set up a staging site for emergency workers responding to Milton at the stadium.
A flash flood emergency remained in effect for the Tampa Bay area Thursday morning, including the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, the hurricane center said.
The storm surge warning on Florida’s west coast was lifted around 8 a.m., but remained in effect on Florida’s east coast.
With Post wires
For top headlines, breaking news and more, visit nypost.com.
Get updates delivered to you daily. Free and customizable.
It’s essential to note our commitment to transparency:
Our Terms of Use acknowledge that our services may not always be error-free, and our Community Standards emphasize our discretion in enforcing policies. As a platform hosting over 100,000 pieces of content published daily, we cannot pre-vet content, but we strive to foster a dynamic environment for free expression and robust discourse through safety guardrails of human and AI moderation.
Comments / 0