Tampa Bay area battered, bruised by Hurricane Milton, but still standing

TAMPA BAY, Fla. — The surge went south, the water was sucked out of Tampa Bay, but the winds hit us dead on.

Overnight Wednesday, Hurricane Milton’s sustained winds of more than 100 mph shredded Tropicana Field’s roof, uprooted grown trees, snapped power lines and toppled a massive crane into the headquarters of the Tampa Bay Times in downtown St. Petersburg.

The storm dumped biblical amounts of rain — around 17 inches in parts of Pinellas and Hillsborough counties in just six hours — forcing the National Weather Service to declare a rare flash flood emergency.

But as Tampa Bay awoke Thursday, it appeared the region was battered and bruised, but not knocked out. In many ways, the storm didn’t measure up to the dire warnings that had been issued by local and state officials.

Along Beach Drive in downtown St. Petersburg, winds had twisted signs and left branches in the road, but many of the businesses seemed largely unscathed. In Tampa’s Lowry Park neighborhood, the water didn’t appear to have risen like it did during Helene.

In Gulfport and the Shore Acres neighborhood of St. Petersburg, the mounds of ruined furniture and appliances that were feared to become deadly projectiles still lined curbs — an almost unbelievable stroke of good fortune.

Roads and bridges were in good enough shape that Pinellas County’s borders and barrier islands were reopened by 9:30 a.m. Thursday.

State and local officials had warned of far worse. Tampa Mayor Jane Castor said earlier this week that Milton was “literally catastrophic” and that anyone who didn’t obey evacuation orders was “going to die.”

On Thursday morning, Gov. Ron DeSantis said the storm surge was not as bad as Helene.

“Thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario,” DeSantis said Thursday morning. “Definitely the surge did not reach Helene levels.”

That Tampa Bay could be ravaged so soon after Hurricane Helene seemed cruel even for Mother Nature. Two weeks ago, much of the region absorbed record levels of storm surge that destroyed thousands of homes. While some projections showed Milton’s surge would be worse, that threat receded when Milton nudged south for an 8:30 Wednesday night landfall at Siesta Key in Sarasota County.

But while Pinellas and Hillsborough counties saw massive wind and rain, to the south of Milton’s eye, it was several feet of storm surge along Florida’s southwest coast that brought reports of flooding. The extent of the damage is unclear, especially in the barrier islands. Early images showed seawater rushing into Charlotte Harbor, Venice, Punta Gorda and Fort Myers.

On Siesta Key, near where the storm made landfall, it was hard to tell where the damage from one storm ended and the ruin of another began. Couches were thrown across the pavement while floodwater a few inches deep lingered in some places.

As Doug Manning, 56, entered his front door at 4:30 a.m. to check out the damage, the floodwaters had already receded. And it didn’t seem like they had been as deep as during Helene.

”Oh wow,” he said. “This is nice. Nowhere near as high as last time.”

Milton brought another front earlier Wednesday in the central and eastern parts of the state. Dozens of tornadoes touched down, destroying an estimated 150 homes, DeSantis said Wednesday night. The tornadoes extended as far as the east coast, where they killed four people in St. Lucie County, WPTV reported.

By 5 a.m. Milton’s eyewall had finally left Florida, leaving 3.1 million customers across the state without power. About a third of those were in Pinellas and Hillsborough.

Florida Department of Health officials warned the public not to enter water due to the increased risk of water-borne illness.

Although Milton didn’t wreck the region as many had expected, it still left dramatic scenes of destruction.

At Harbor Lights Club, a mobile home park on Long Bayou in St. Petersburg, the damage of two back-to-back hurricanes blended into one indistinguishable mess. Some houses that were flooded here two weeks ago now appear to have collapsed from Hurricane Milton’s relentless winds.

Debris, overturned trash cans, tree limbs, water and the side of a house were strewn across the neighborhood. The community was silent without electricity, the faint thrumming of an alarm in the distance.

Milton shredded the fabric roof at Tropicana Field, littering the outfield of the Tampa Bay Rays’ home with its remnants and covering many of the hundreds of cots that had been set up to house emergency workers. A spokesperson for DeSantis said the state had shifted emergency workers to Jacksonville in advance of the storm.

A massive construction crane smashed into the Times office in downtown St. Petersburg and lay across First Avenue South. Several stories up, smoke billowed out of the corner of the building and alarm lights flashed.

In Tampa’s Ybor City, a large piece of roofing was ripped from a business and rattled in the breeze as it draped over a fence. The giant sign for Ikea strobed into the darkness, one of its faces gone. A historic pillared home had its awning yanked off.

But as Matthew Nelson, 63, walked to work with a backpack slung over his shoulder just before 6:30 a.m., the decorative lights overhanging Ybor City’s main drag on 7th Avenue shined on.

“We did way more than OK,” he said.

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Tampa Bay Times staff writers Christopher Spata, Zachary T. Sampson, Chris Urso, Emily L. Mahoney, Ian Hodgson, Max Chesnes, Divya Kumar, Lauren Peace and Stephanie Hayes contributed to this report.

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