Heavy winds and intense rain from Hurricane Milton’s outer bands lashed Florida’s Gulf Coast and flooded its beaches today as the Category 3 storm neared landfall. Tornado warnings blanketed the Florida peninsula.

“The storm seemed to arrive all at once late in the morning, bringing bands of thick rain and whipping wind,” my colleague Patricia Mazzei, who reported today from Sarasota, told me.

Milton is expected to make landfall around midnight and carve a path of destruction across the center of the state. About 5.5 million people faced evacuation orders.

Forecasters cautioned that predicting its exact landfall was not yet possible, though the current projections have the storm heading toward Sarasota, which has not had a direct hit from a hurricane since 1946. Here’s the latest look at Milton’s anticipated path, and the probability different Florida cities will see damaging winds.

Experts warned that the most dangerous effect of the hurricane could be its storm surge, which could reach up to 15 feet in low-lying communities along more than 70 miles of Florida’s western coastline. Even farther inland, forecasters warned that water levels could surge to eight feet above ground. This map shows where the worst flooding is expected.