Milton’s Surprise Was the Damage Unleashed by Powerful Winds

Storm Weakened But Still Brought 120-mph Winds to St. Petersburg Area

Hurricane Milton’s devastating path across Florida has left at least 10 dead, millions without power, and destroyed homes and crops, as authorities warn it could take days to assess the full extent of the damages.

Milton delivered a quick, hard blow to the center of the state, tearing across the peninsula in just a few hours before racing back out to sea. The storm surge that swamped Florida’s west coast on Wednesday was about half as high as forecasters had feared. Landing just outside Sarasota, Milton’s 120 mile per hour winds (193 kilometers per hour) even pushed water out of Tampa Bay and into the Gulf, rather than inundating surrounding cities.

Instead, much of the worst damage — a crane tossed into a St. Petersburg building, the shredded roof of the Tropicana Field sports stadium — came from wind rather than water.

“The storm was significant, but thankfully, this was not the worst-case scenario,” Governor Ron DeSantis said at a Thursday press conference.

In a dangerous twist, Milton’s wind shear and thunderstorms in the hours before landfall triggered a severe tornado outbreak on the eastern side of the state. At least 38 tornado reports came into the US Storm Prediction Center, many of them from along the Interstate 95 corridor, near Palm Beach and St. Lucie. The exact number of tornadoes remains to be seen.

“There’s some really extensive damage, like roofs ripped off,” said Luke Culver, a National Weather Service meteorologist.

Culver said the tornadoes were spawned by conditions in Milton’s dry, southeast quadrant, which extended hundreds of miles inland. “There’s a very high amount of shear in that quadrant of the hurricane,” he said, “and that shear causes thunderstorms to begin rotating, which is what eventually leads to a tornado.”

Milton’s brief rampage stood in marked contrast to Hurricane Helene, which struck the state just two weeks earlier. Helene drenched parts of the southeastern US with heavy rain for days, both before and after landfall, triggering floods and killing more than 230 people. Less than 24 hours after Milton’s landfall, the storm that dropped 18.75 inches (48 centimeters) of water on St. Petersburg was a spent post-tropical cyclone over the Atlantic, speeding away from shore.

The full scope of Milton’s destruction won’t be known for days or perhaps weeks. The death toll stood at 10, Secretary of Homeland Security Alejandro Mayorkas said during a briefing on Thursday. That number could rise as search-and-rescue efforts continue.

Many of the 80,000 people who fled to government shelters to ride out the storm will return to destroyed homes.

The Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, whose stadium roof was torn off by the storm, said in a statement it would assess damage in the coming weeks.

Utilities are inspecting power lines and plants, many of which lay in the direct path of the storm. About 2.4 million homes and businesses remain without electricity in Florida as of 8:30 a.m. New York time, according to poweroutage.us. Utility service provider Duke Energy Florida said it would on Friday issue estimated times for power restoration to all customers impacted by the storm.

“We are really stressing and emphasizing our customers remain very steadfast and stay away from downed power lines, always assuming they are energized,” Melissa Seixas, president of Duke Energy Corp. in Florida, said in a Bloomberg TV interview.

“Hurricane Helene was a very different storm in many ways because of the storm surge that it created up and down the Gulf Coast in our service area,” she added. “Milton was very much a wind event as well.”

In Sarasota County, where Milton made landfall, an emergency operations center is continuing to run round the clock. Sandra Tapfumaneyi, the county’s emergency services management chief, urged people to be careful on roads, which staff have been clearing of debris.

“We know some of you did travel far away to evacuate,” she said. “If you are ready to try and make that voyage back, we would welcome you back to the county and just be careful as you come back this way.”

Losses may reach $60 billion to $75 billion, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research. AccuWeather put the cost much higher at $160 billion to $180 billion.

President Joe Biden promised swift action and urged Congress to ensure the Federal Emergency Management Agency and the Small Business Administration — already dealing with Helene’s aftermath — have the resources needed.

“Congress should be coming back and moving on emergency needs immediately,” Biden said at a press conference. He also warned against scammers or price-gougers trying to take advantage of the disaster.

Some businesses seemed poised to bounce back quickly. Comcast Corp.’s Orlando theme parks will reopen Friday, Chief Executive Officer Brian Roberts said at Bloomberg’s Screentime conference in Los Angeles.

“As soon as power’s back, we’ll be back,” Roberts said.

Meanwhile, Walt Disney Co.’s World Resort “weathered the storm,” and the company is preparing to reopen the theme park Friday, a spokesperson wrote in an email. SeaWorld Orlando will also reopen Friday, according to a company statement.

At least seven ports remain closed in Florida, including St. Petersburg, Jacksonville, and Fort Myers. Port Tampa Bay, one of the busiest US maritime gateways for fertilizer exports, said it was without power but had found “no significant damage to docks, so far.” The port, as well as the nearby Port Manatee, have reopened with some restrictions to vessel movements, according to the US Coast Guard.

Fertilizer producer Mosaic Co., which had idled its Florida operations ahead of Milton’s arrival, said in a statement on Thursday that it was working to confirm the safety of its employees and will “begin assessing the impact on our operations” when conditions allow.

Trevor Murphy, a citrus grower in Highlands County, said he “lost a decent amount of the early crop,” which was fewer than 60 days out from harvest. Valencia oranges from the main crop didn’t fall off the trees as much but there is “still a decent amount on the ground,” Murphy said, adding that fruits will continue to drop over the next one to two weeks.

In addition to damaged crops and power blackouts, Floridians will have to deal with residual flooding, some of it tainted with sewage. Millions of gallons of raw and partially treated sewage have flowed into streets and rivers as floodwater swamped infrastructure and power outages knocked pumps offline.

The city of Leesburg’s wastewater treatment plant, for example, spilled nearly 2 million gallons of untreated sewage, according to a filing with the state’s Department of Environmental Protection. The city of St. Petersburg, which had shut off drinking water due to major water main breaks from Milton, has restored potable water supply but a citywide boil water advisory will remain in place until Monday Oct. 14.

Homeowners, meanwhile, are assessing damage to roofs and windows, and helping neighbors as they can.

Greg Cruz, a 49-year-old in Sarasota, rode out Milton at his home, which is in a mandatory evacuation zone. He said he didn’t have a place to go with his three kids, ages 19, 16 and 14, and his dog.

“We had the house boarded up, so we couldn’t see outside, and all you could hear is the battering of the wind,” he said.

–With assistance from Brian K. Sullivan, Michael Smith, Alex Newman, Ilena Peng, Lisa Abramowicz, Jonathan Ferro, Brendan Murray, Ari Natter, Tope Alake, Josh Saul, Zahra Hirji and Michelle Ma.

Top photo: A crane collapsed into a St. Petersburg office building that housed the Tampa Bay Times newsroom. News staff kept working. (Bloomberg photo).