Florida power outage map: 3 million Floridians without power following Hurricane Milton
By Julia Gomez and C. A. Bridges, USA TODAY,
11 hours ago
Three million people are without power after Hurricane Milton swept through Florida on Wednesday and Thursday.
The storm made landfall in the state on Wednesday night. On Thursday morning, the storm left Florida through its east coast and headed toward the Sargasso Sea in the Atlantic Ocean.
As of 1:20 p.m. ET, approximately 3,091,307 customers, primarily across Central Florida, are in the dark, according to data from USA TODAY's power outage tracker.
In Hillsborough County, where Tampa is, 100% of the customers tracked, 430,747, are without power, making it the county with the highest number of outages in Florida.
In Manatee County, near where the eye of the hurricane made landfall, 189,456 customers, 73.8%, lost power.
Following Hurricane Milton? Sign up for USA TODAY's Climate Point newsletter for exclusive weather analysis.
Floridians could "experience longer than normal restoration times following the storm," according to Florida Power and Light Company, FPL.
"FPL crews will restore power between bands of severe weather as long as it is safe," the company stated in a press release on Wednesday.
Before the storm made landfall, Floridians were asked to rush to prepare for long-duration power outages.
"As Hurricane Milton approaches Florida’s west coast, Duke Energy Florida is urging its customers to prepare for this catastrophic storm and a lengthy power restoration process that will result in extended outages," Duke Energy stated on its website, which provides electricity to 8.4 million customers in North Carolina, South Carolina, Florida, Indiana, Ohio and Kentucky.
On Monday, the company said it would mobilize around 10,000 responders to prepare for the high amount of outages its customers could face. Similarly, FPL prepared a restoration workforce of 17,000 people to address power outages after the storm.
Thursday morning, 766,984 Duke Energy Florida customers are facing power outages, according to Poweroutage.us. Originally, the company estimated that over a million of its customers would face extended power outages. Around 1,153,288 FPL customers are also without power.
Hurricane Milton tracker
Hurricane Milton spaghetti models
Illustrations include an array of forecast tools and models, and not all are created equal. The hurricane center uses only the top four or five highest-performing models to help make its forecasts.
Restoration efforts following outages
Once power outages begin, restoration efforts will be launched in force wherever and whenever it is safe to do so. But restoration may run into problems left over from Hurricane Helene.
Power restoration will be prioritized to restore power to the largest number of customers as quickly as possible. According to FPL, priorities are given to :
Power plants and damaged lines and substations
Critical facilities such as hospitals, police and fire stations, communication facilities, water treatment plants and transportation providers
Major thoroughfares with supermarkets, pharmacies, gas stations and other needed community services.
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