An expanding Hurricane Milton churned toward Florida's battered Gulf Coast on Tuesday, where more than 1 million people were ordered to evacuate a day before the monster storm slams the Tampa Bay area and ploughs across the state.
Milton, which exploded on Monday (local time) into one of the most intense Atlantic hurricanes on record, was forecast to make landfall late on Wednesday, threatening a stretch of Florida's densely populated west coast that is still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.
A direct hit on the bay would be the first since 1921, when the now-sprawling Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater area was a relative backwater.
"Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida," the US National Hurricane Center said.
The centre forecast storm surges of 10 to 15 feet (3 to 4.5 metres) along the coastline north and south of Tampa Bay, likely swamping low-lying areas. Forecasts of five to 10 inches (127 to 254mm) or more of rainfall threatened flash flooding farther inland.
Less than two weeks ago, Helene hit the Gulf Coast's barrier islands and beaches hard, sweeping away tonnes of sand, knocking down dunes and blowing away dune grass. That could exacerbate Milton's storm surge, according to Isaac Longley, a meteorologist with the commercial forecasting company AccuWeather.
"There's no gradual slope left to mitigate any of it," Longley said.
Ahead of Milton's arrival, some of the Tampa Bay area's 3 million residents rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left by Helene that the new storm could turn into projectiles.
Musician John O'Leary, 38, was securing his Tampa townhouse and packing for a road trip with his girlfriend to New Port Richey, about 64km north. He was worried about his baby grand piano, which he had to leave behind.
They plan to stay with friends who have a home on high ground but will keep an eye on the storm's path and may head farther north.
"This storm is so strong, big, it's unreal," he said. "We're in survival mode."
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the state would activate 8000 National Guard members and is positioning truckloads of supplies and equipment near where landfall is expected.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor warned residents that trying to ride out the storm would be foolish.
"Individuals that are in a single-storey home, 12 feet is above that," she said, referring to the expected storm surge. "So if you're in it, basically, that's the coffin that you are in."
President Joe Biden postponed on Tuesday his October 10-15 trip to Germany and Angola to oversee storm preparation and response, the White House said. Biden urged those under evacuation orders to leave immediately, saying it was a matter of life and death.
FLEEING THE STORM
State ferryboat operator Ken Wood, 58, spent Tuesday morning packing up his truck in the Gulf city of Dunedin about 24 miles (39 km) west of Tampa so he could avoid the brunt of the storm with Andy, his 16-year-old cat.
Two weeks ago, Wood defied evacuation orders and hunkered down in his house during Helene, a night he described as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life.
"We won't make the same mistake again," he said.
More than a dozen coastal counties issued mandatory evacuation orders, including Tampa's Hillsborough County. Pinellas County, which includes St. Petersburg, ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones.
Motorists waited to fill their tanks in lines snaking around gas stations, only to find that some were out of fuel. By early Tuesday, bumper-to-bumper traffic choked roads leading out of Tampa.
It took Mark Feinman, 38, and his family 13 hours to drive 800km from St. Petersburg to Pensacola near the Florida-Alabama state line.
Feinman, a musician, said some motorists were speeding through breakdown lanes and across grass medians to cut ahead, causing accidents. All gas stations for about a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 10 seemed to be out of gasoline.
"Luckily we have a hybrid, and we're able to switch between gas and the battery," he said.
CATASTROPHIC DAMAGE EXPECTED
Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic, as it surged from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane - the most powerful - in less than 24 hours.
Milton was downgraded to a Category 4 hurricane on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale but was still packing maximum sustained winds of 241kmh, according to the National Hurricane Center's latest advisory on Tuesday.
Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane after landfall in Florida, causing catastrophic damage and power outages expected to last days.
Milton is expected to grow in size before making landfall, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm-surge danger zone, said Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center. The area placed under hurricane warnings is home to more than 9.3 million residents.
As of 2pm on Tuesday (local time), the storm was 201km northeast of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 837km southwest of Tampa, according to the hurricane centre.
Governor Joaquin Diaz Mena, of Yucatan state, said much of the damage reported so far had been minor, though thousands of utility customers lost power.
Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US Southeast in the wake of Helene, which made landfall in Florida on September 26, killed more than 200 people across six states and caused billions of dollars in damage.
