Hurricane Milton, a monster Cat 4, roars toward Florida Gulf Coast landfall

MIAMI — Hurricane Milton remained an extremely dangerous Category 4 hurricane Wednesday morning with less than a day left before it slams into Florida’s Gulf Coast with roof-ripping winds and potentially lethal walls of water as high as 15 feet.

The storm, with sustained winds still clocking in at 155 mph, finally made the fateful turn to the northeast that will steer it toward what promises to be a catastrophic strike sometime in the darkness of late Wednesday night or early Thursday.

At 8 a.m. Wednesday, the forecast track from the National Hurricane Center was slightly south of the mouth of Tampa Bay and heavily populated communities that are extremely vulnerable to storm surge. If it remains on that path over the next 15 to 18 hours, Sarasota and coastal cities to the south, including Fort Myers Beach, which is still rebuilding from Category 4 Hurricane Ian two years again, would see the worst of the surge.

Overnight, storm surge predictions for those areas rose to 10 to 15 feet for Sarasota and Fort Myers and 8 to 12 feet for the Naples area, while predictions for Tampa Bay dropped from a peak of 15 feet to 12 feet.

But a wobble back north to Tampa was still possible and forecasters have repeatedly warned that there will be widespread, potentially lethal coastal flooding along much of the coast — including in the Tampa Bay region — no matter where Milton comes in.

Wind shear expected

The storm was about 250 miles southwest of Tampa early Wednesday and the first tropical storm winds will begin sweeping the Gulf Coast within hours.

Milton was expected to begin weakening later in the day as it slurps in dry air and encounters wind shear. But the hurricane has stubbornly maintained intensity in the hot Gulf of Mexico. It is still forecast to make landfall as a major Category 4 storm with 130 mph winds and maintain its hurricane strength as it crosses the state Thursday.

South Florida remained under a tropical storm watch, but Miami-Dade and Broward counties will likely see just squally weather, with gusts up to 40 mph. There could be some fast-moving storms but the National Weather Service lifted a flash flood warning early Wednesday. The Florida Keys could see coastal flooding from storm surge, as well as gusts up to 65 mph.

Milton’s path and power — it literally looked like a perfect buzzsaw blade on satellite image early Wednesday — promised to leave a swath of damage across much of the central peninsula. There will certainly be widespread power outages, wiped-out coastal homes, and ripped-off roofs. The damage from coast to coast could be historic in a state with a long, expensive history of hurricane strikes. There’s some hope that the potential death toll won’t be.

Over the last few days, evacuees have streamed out of coastal communities from Naples to Cedar Key. Many were still cleaning up from the passage of Hurricane Helene, which flooded thousands of homes. The Tampa Bay region experienced its worst coastal flooding in a century, though Helene’s core remained as much as a hundred miles offshore.

The entire Florida Gulf Coast bears recent hurricane scars. Just two years ago, Cat 4 Hurricane Ian destroyed Fort Myers Beach, drowning the city. That storm wound up the deadliest in Florida in nearly a century, killing 149 people, including 72 in Lee County, many who had failed to evacuate.

Forecasters expect the wind field of the now-compact storm to double by the time it comes ashore — bringing 130 mph sustained winds and higher gusts, plus record-setting storm surge, to much of Florida. Milton could also bring more than a foot of rain to areas north of its eye, up to 18 inches in some spots.

“You’re going to see flooding of homes and businesses, you’re going to see rescues. It will flood in areas that don’t normally flood,” said Mike Brennan, director of the National Hurricane Center, in a Tuesday morning broadcast. “I’m pleading with you to get out of those storm surge evacuation areas if you have not yet.”

Ready for Milton

Most of the state, far beyond the expected landfall area, was hunkering down for Milton’s arrival. Major airports in Tampa and Orlando prepared to shut down. Schools announced pending closures across much of the state, including in South Florida. Millions of residents across the state were under hurricane warnings or watches.

As rain fell Tuesday on Palm Bay, a Brevard County city about 4 miles west of Melbourne Beach, business owners were busy making preparations for Milton. Nobody knew what the storm would do as it traversed Florida, but forecasters expected it will still be a hurricane when it gets here.

Tattoo shop owner Dave Parker and his tattoo artist Jesse Cuen were cutting plywood and boarding up Parker’s High Class Ink Studio on Babcock Street Parker. Parker said Palm Bay has faced hurricanes before, but this is the first time he’s decided to board up his shop. He also buttoned up his studio in Rockledge, about 30 miles inland and closer to Milton’s projected path.

“I don’t want to take a chance with these guys’ livelihood or mine,” Parker said as he sawed a portion of plywood. “I mean, if it’s coming in as a 5 over there, it might slow down to a 1 or 2, or it might stay strong.”

Across the Melbourne Causeway, at the Copperhead Tavern — a small outdoor bar and grill on 5th Avenue and A1A — business was steady Tuesday evening with people ordering drinks, burgers, fish and chips and mahi tacos.

Manager and bartender Alexis Bragg was serving customers as other staff pulled in chairs from the patio and covered computers with plastic trash bags.

“Everybody I’ve been talking to today, no one is leaving,” Bragg said. “They’re just hunkering down.”

The 27-year-old said she’d be heading to her mother’s house in Palm Bay because she lives in a first-floor apartment near the beach that floods on a regular basis just on a normal rainy day.

“If it was on the second level, I would stay. But we lose power super easy at my apartment, and my mom has a generator,” Bragg said. “We’ll just party there. It’s fine.”