Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm.
We're not allowed to say that, though: Kamala, America's Drunken, Embarassing Side-Piece, wants to play president and will go on CNN to say that reporting the actual strength of the storm is "misinformation" because we're all required to lie to amp up the fear and pretend that Kamala Harris is "really showing executive competency."
It wasn't as bad as Experts predicted. Does that mean Global Warming is a lie? They said the power of the storm proved global warming; does the relative weakness of the storm prove global warming is fake?
Just wondering.
Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, Florida late Wednesday evening as a Category 3 storm with winds of 120 mph.
Around 3.2 million people in Florida are without power Thursday afternoon as the storm has devastated Florida's coast.
Milton is currently a Category 1 storm and has moved off the coast, bringing destructive winds, flooding rains and storm surge in its wake.
More than 10 inches of rain has fallen so far in some parts of Florida and an additional 8 to 12 inches of rain is possible in many areas.
St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson also confirmed to Fox Weather that there have been 17 tornadoes along with several fatalities in his county, with "a rescue mission ongoing, and hundreds of homes destroyed."
At least 10 fatalities have been confirmed, with more expected
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis gave an update on Hurricane Milton Thursday afternoon after it made landfall the night before as a Category 3 Storm.
By Thursday afternoon, the governor said, at least 340 individuals and 49 pets had been rescued. Florida National Guard, Florida law enforcement, and urban search and rescue teams were continuing to work through the day. Hundreds of rescuers were engaged in more than 125 missions in 26 counties.
"The northern side of the storm had a lot of precipitation. They were just getting water dumped on them. So, whereas [Hurricane] Helene created a lot of storm surge in that part of the state, this one didn't do that here, but it create inland flooding," DeSantis said.
Around 4 million were left without power. As of the 3 p.m. update, around 880,000 had been restored, with 3.2 million accounts still without power.
He pre-deployed 50,000 linesmen so power lines are going back up.
DeSantis said that while Hurricane Milton did inflict damage, "I think in some areas that in terms of what was being predicted, some of the worst case scenarios did not come to pass, certainly in terms of some of the storm surge people were predicting."
He has a warning for Kamala voters -- I mean, "looters."
Gov. DeSantis warned people against taking advantage of a dire situation.
"I'm warning you, don't do that. If you loot, you will be held accountable. If you're doing things that violate the law, if you're gonna try to take advantage of vulnerable people, we're going to throw the book at you," DeSantis said.
He then went on to own the relentless propgandists of the press, who kept demanding he tell them that global warming is real and will kill us all.
At a press conference on Thursday, DeSantis was asked whether "global warming" impacted the hurricane's intensity after Milton spawned several tornadoes that wreaked havoc in the Sunshine State.
DeSantis rejected the premise that Milton was worse than previous hurricanes, stating, "I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history."
Compared to previous storms, Milton had a barometric pressure of about 950 millibars when it made landfall, the governor said. "I think if you go back to 1851, there's probably been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure -- so the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is."
The governor noted that 17 hurricanes stronger than Milton made landfall in Florida prior to 1960 and that the strongest hurricane on record since the 1850s was the Labor Day hurricane, which occurred in 1935 and had a barometric pressure of 892 millibars. The most deadly hurricane in Florida history happened in 1928, he added.
"I just think people should put this in perspective there. They tried to take different things that happened with tropical weather and act like it's something -- there's nothing new under the sun," DeSantis said.
"I think what's changed is we've got 23 million people. A storm is likely to hit more people and property than it would have 100 years ago. And so the potential for that damage has grown, but what's also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to pre-stage the assets."
Damn.
JusttheNews reports that FEMA is incompetent under the Harris-Biden Regime because Harris and Biden are diverting FEMA workers to... help build shelters for illegal aliens streaming across the border.
And performing "Covid funerals."
What?
On the eve of Hurricane Milton's landfall on a disaster-weary Florida, FEMA, the nation's disaster relief agency reported a stark shortage of frontline workers available to be deployed: just 8% of the Federal Emergency Management Agency's vaunted Incident Management personnel were still available for deployment.
The stunning declaration in Wednesday's Daily Operations Briefing exposed the longtime impact of FEMA's expanding work on unrelated missions like COVID funerals and illegal immigrant services, a crisis created by a worker shortage, a workforce morale issue and the reality of burnout from a increasingly frenetic natural disaster pace.
Just seven months earlier, the Government Accountability Office, the auditing arm of Congress, warned that FEMA was in an increasingly weak position to handle multiple major crises at once.
"Increasingly complex and severe natural disasters coupled with the COVID-19 pandemic and responsibilities at the southern border have created an unprecedented demand for FEMA's disaster workforce," the GAO concluded.
...
Wednesday's situation report showed FEMA had most of its IM (incident management) resources deployed in the region struck by Hurricane Helene two weeks ago or pre-positioned in Florida for Milton. But the 8% in reserves -- only 90 workers -- would be be hard pressed if another disaster like an earthquake or wildfire broke out in the ensuing days.
"I think we plan for multiple events. We've done this before we are prepared for this," she added.
Several factors contribute to the increasing strain on the workforce of the nation's premier disaster relief agency related to the agency's expanding roles and responsibilities outside of traditional disaster relief. The GAO report specifically highlighted the impacts of workforce burnout from increased responsibility for the COVID-19 pandemic response and deployments to the U.S. southern border.
FEMA did not respond to additional questions from Just the News about the number of FEMA employees or contractors deployed to the southern border or handling other immigration-related programs.
Recently, Congress has continued to fund FEMA programs for feeding and sheltering illegal immigrants released into the country awaiting court dates at a time when the agency is running short of disaster relief funds. The agency has come under additional scrutiny by Republicans for hiccups in its response to severe flooding in the southeast last month, Just the News reported this week.
White House spokeswoman Karine-Jean Pierre took the lead in trying to suggest it was a "conspiracy theory" to suggest that FEMA was using its resources to aid illegal aliens. Republicans came back with receipts, showing that FEMA had routed $640.9 million in grants to nonprofits aiding immigrants, many of whom have crossed into the U.S. illegally.
...
Last week, a group of Republican Senators who did not support the budget deal wrote to the Department of Homeland Security, which oversees FEMA, expressing concern that its continued "entanglement" with immigration threatens readiness.
"FEMA's continued entanglement in DHS's efforts to respond to the border crisis could impact its readiness and emergency response mission," GOP Senators James Lankford, Josh Hawley, Rand Paul, and Ron Jonson wrote to Biden last week. "Rather than ensuring FEMA is ready to respond to hurricanes and other emergencies, FEMA has been pulled into a border crisis mission."
Grandstanding nepo baby Anderson Cooper stood outside in the Milton storm for a few minutes to prove he's a Real Reporter and nature responded to this idiocy by popping him in his well-traveled mouth with a piece of flying debris.