What happened to Florida's top beach after Hurricane Milton made landfall there?

Howard Cohen, Miami Herald on Oct 10, 2024

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MIAMI — Hurricane Milton crashed into Siesta Key, a barrier island along Sarasota County’s coast, at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday as a 120 mph Category 3 storm.

Landfall came just south of Tampa Bay.

Here’s what to know about Siesta Key:

Siesta Key’s claim to fame

Siesta Key, a beckoning tourist hotspot, is known as the best beach in the eastern United States.

That’s what Condé Nast Traveler said in its 2023 “10 Best Beach Towns on the East Coast” list. Tastemakers at the site put the powdery beach atop the finest other destinations including Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, Georgia and the Carolinas have to offer.

The travel site celebrated Siesta Key for the gentle support it provides travelers’ weary feet.

“We want to laud Siesta Key in particular for its fine sand, which comes from the Appalachian Mountains and is made up almost entirely of cool and reflective quartz, its waterfront dining and drinking, and its excellence for water sports like parasailing.

The three beaches to visit on Siesta Key are Siesta Beach, Crescent Beach, and Turtle Beach,” Condé Nast Traveler wrote.

Siesta Key also scored with Tripadvisor in its 2023 Travelers’ Choice Awards as the second best beach in the United States, just a notch below Ka’anapali Beach on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

Siesta Key was even the setting of an MTV reality television series named for the beach town that premiered in 2017.

“To view a real sunset, go to Siesta Key,” the Miami Herald wrote in a 2013 story on Sarasota, a 230-mile drive from South Florida.

First view after Hurricane Milton

Siesta Key experienced “a great deal of flooding” from storm surge, but the water was starting to subside, Sandra Tapfumaneyi, chief of emergency management at Sarasota County Emergency Services, told CNN Thursday morning. Storm surge was about seven to eight feet, topping Hurricane Helene’s wrath two weeks earlier, she said.

“Siesta Key looks way better than expected,” read a Facebook post on the Top 10 Sarasota group page. The group shared Jessica Hoffman’s live video post shared Thursday morning to the Siesta Key-ASK THE LOCALS group that she administers. “We survived! I can’t even believe it,” she said over her footage.