Hurricane Milton carved an uneven path of destruction across Florida. It maintained hurricane-strength winds from its landfall on the Gulf Coast last night until its exit this morning into the Atlantic Ocean. Coastal neighborhoods were swallowed by storm surge, inland towns were flooded with rain and nearly three million homes and businesses — about a quarter of the state — remain without power.

The storm also caused several intense tornadoes on Florida’s Atlantic coast that killed at least five people, including some in a retirement community. Two other hurricane-related deaths were confirmed, and emergency workers rescued hundreds of people from damaged buildings and flooded vehicles. But the densely populated Tampa Bay region appeared to have been spared from the worst-case projections of the storm’s potential damage.

“Some people along the Gulf Coast are pretty relieved,” my colleague Patricia Mazzei, who spent the day reporting from the Tampa Bay area, told me. “But the ones facing a second or third flood inside their homes are exhausted.”

Patricia saw lots of wind damage in the area, but less devastating storm surge than had been expected. The winds ripped the roof off Tropicana Field, the home of Tampa’s baseball team, and slammed a tower crane into a building in downtown St. Petersburg housing the region’s major newspaper, The Tampa Bay Times.

Efforts to get people to follow evacuation orders and warnings appear to have worked. President Biden said over 80,000 Floridians safely sheltered from the storm.