Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday, October 9, along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm, bringing powerful winds, deadly storm surge and potential flooding to much of the state. Milton drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters, twice reaching Category 5 status.
The cyclone roared ashore near Siesta Key in Sarasota County, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center said. The storm was bringing 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.
Milton slammed into a Florida region still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which caused heavy damage to beach communities with storm surge and killed a dozen people in seaside Pinellas County alone.
Meanwhile, former President Donald Trump offered his prayers to those in the path of Hurricane Milton as it began to lash Florida while continuing to insult his rival, Vice President Kamala Harris, and other women, saying he had no interest in stopping even if it turned off female voters. "I don’t want to be nice," Trump said at his first of two rallies of the day in the pivotal battleground state of Pennsylvania. "You know, somebody said, 'You should be nicer. Women won’t like it.' I said, I don’t care."
Trump kept up his campaign schedule even as the storm threatened to overshadow the presidential race with fears that it would cause catastrophic damage in Tampa and other parts of Florida's Gulf Coast. Harris flew to Nevada for a Western campaign swing but first attended a briefing on the storm and the federal response with President Joe Biden at the White House.