Hurricane Milton has left at least 16 people dead in Florida, with five people being killed in the tornadoes that hit St. Lucie County. More than 2 million people are still without power.
Milton made landfall near Siesta Key as a Category 3 on Wednesday night, dumping torrential rain throughout the Tampa Bay area and qualifying it as a 1-in-1000-year event as it headed west across the state. St. Petersburg got 18.31 inches of rain (over 1.5 feet in 24 hours), Clearwater Beach got 14.01 inches, and Baskin saw 13.09 inches, according to the National Weather Service.
Major flooding from the Alafia River is continuing to increase in Hillsborough County, where Tampa is, and the National Weather Service issued flood warnings advising residents to take extreme precautions.
“There’s cars underwater. Some homes are completely underwater,” Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said during a press conference Thursday.
He added that they “haven’t seen the worst of it yet,” as the Alafia has not reached its peak height.
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As of Thursday, over 500,000 people in Hillsborough County were without power, the highest number of outages in the state.
Nearly 30% of gas stations are empty statewide, and over 77% of Tampa’s gas stations were out of gas as of 1:32 p.m. Friday, according to gas tracking website GasBuddy. Sarasota, Fort Myers, and Naples also have high numbers of empty stations. For air travel, after closures, the Tampa International Airport and Palm Beach International Airport resumed Thursday, and Orlando International Airport opened Friday.