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Hurricane Milton strengthened into a severe Category 3 storm early Monday and rolled across the Gulf of Mexico with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour, causing a potentially devastating crash along Florida's already storm-ravaged west coast.

The National Hurricane Center issued hurricane warnings for parts of Florida, warning that parts of the state could be inundated by life-threatening storm surges, flooding rains and damaging winds.

Milton is expected to become an “extremely dangerous” Category 4 hurricane later Monday and maintain that intensity over the next few days. A Category 4 hurricane has sustained winds of 130-156 miles per hour. Some weakening is then forecast before the hurricane reaches the coast, but Milton “is likely still a large and strong hurricane when it makes landfall in Florida,” hurricane center specialist Jack Beven wrote in an advisory.

Rainfall totals of 5 to 10 inches are expected to occur in some areas of the state that were already saturated before Hurricane Helene hit less than two weeks ago. The hurricane center said isolated communities could see 15 inches. A deadly storm surge of 8 to 12 feet is forecast for Tampa and surrounding coastal areas.

“The tracking is well consistent that the hurricane will cross the Florida Peninsula, but significant differences remain in both location and timing of landfall,” Beven wrote.

Developments:

∎ Milton was 745 miles west-southwest of Tampa early Monday and moving east-southeast at a speed of 8 miles per hour.

∎ Mexico has issued a hurricane warning for the coast of the Yucatan Peninsula from Celestun to Rio Lagartos.

Hurricane Milton Tracker: Follow the forecast path of the Category 3 storm expected to hit Florida

Pinellas, Manatee and Sarasota were among the counties expected to announce evacuation orders on Monday. Pinellas County, which includes the city of St. Petersburg, planned to announce mandatory evacuations for 500,000 people in low-lying areas, Sheriff Bob Gualtieri said Sunday. He urged people to follow evacuation orders after he said too many ignored them for Helene, leading to 12 deaths in the county and 1,500 unanswered emergency calls.

The county has already ordered the evacuation of six hospitals, 25 nursing homes and 44 assisted living facilities with a total of 6,600 patients, said Cathie Perkins, county emergency management director. School operations were canceled until Wednesday.

Kevin Guthrie, head of Florida's Division of Emergency Management, said the state was preparing for the largest evacuation since Hurricane Irma in 2017, when more than 6 million Floridians were forced to leave their homes.

Ryan Truchelut, WeatherTiger's chief meteorologist, says Helene and Milton will likely rank among the most devastating double whammy ever to hit Florida. The latest title would land somewhere between the Nature Coast and Marco Island, he wrote for the Tallahassee Democrat, part of the USA TODAY NETWORK.

But Truchelut added that the exact forecast direction is not critical because impacts will be widespread across the Florida Peninsula. And Milton will be a powerful storm, building a life-threatening wall of water for days, regardless of what wind-based hurricane category the storm ultimately reaches at landfall, he wrote.

“The bottom line is that nothing good is happening to Milton today, and I continue to hate that it is happening so much,” Truchelut wrote. “We are facing a heightened threat that has only been seen in a few cases in the history of hurricanes.”

Truchelet added: “We are all already exhausted. It's you, it's me. This is the reality.” Read more here.

Contribution: Reuters

On By John Fenwick

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