As I write this at 5pm Eastern, the center of Hurricane Milton is just 65 miles southwest of Tampa Bay and it's tracking to the northeast at 17 mph. That puts landfall at about 9pm EDT in Tampa. It is still a formidable Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph peak sustained winds as of 5pm EDT.
The center of the hurricane will pass very close to Tampa (if not directly over it), and the bay will get an extremely high storm surge if the southern eyewall passes over the bay, and much less if the northern side passes over it. That's the difference between onshore and offshore winds. The exact inundation depth everywhere won't be known right away, but tide gauges in the area will help with estimates at specific sites... if the tide gauges remain intact. Between the wind and storm surge, this day will change Tampa for a very long time.
The only other analogs that come up for this occurred in 1921 and 1848, so this is unprecedented in the past century, and a LOT has changed in Tampa since 1921!
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| https://bmcnoldy.earth.miami.edu/tropics/radar/ |
A common threat with landfalling hurricanes that sometimes gets overlooked amidst the other hazards is tornadoes. Hurricane rainbands can be prolific tornado producers, primarily in the front-right quadrant (relative to their direction of travel). In that radar animation above, all of those red polygons are tornado warnings that were issued during the day. Some of the observed tornadoes were unusually large and intense -- "wedges" -- which is rather extraordinary for hurricane-spawned tornadoes.
[On the topic of radar, at the link below the animation you will find the archives of Milton's coverage from Sabancuy and Cancun in Mexico, then from La Bajada in Cuba, then from Tampa.]
As I wrote previously, Milton will almost certainly end up being a retired name. It would join other recent retired "M" storms during October: Mitch (1998), Matthew (2016), and Michael (2018). Milton was the name chosen to replace Michael, which made landfall in Florida on October 10, 2018 as a Category 5 hurricane.
Elsewhere, Leslie is actually BACK to hurricane intensity again and the other two areas of interest are still not too likely to form (30% for the one east of Florida and 10% for the one near Cabo Verde).
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