MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Hurricane Milton is plowing across Florida today with high winds, torrential rain, flooding and tornadoes. The hurricane made landfall last night near Sarasota, at Siesta Key as a Category 3 storm with 120 mile per hour winds.
LEILA FADEL, HOST:
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis warned communities in that part of Florida's West Coast to be prepared for a historic storm surge.
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RON DESANTIS: So the storm is here. It's time for everybody to hunker down. I know we've got massive amounts of resources that have been prepared for this storm.
FADEL: Milton is still at hurricane strength today as it moves across the Florida peninsula, bringing damaging winds, heavy rain, and flash flooding.
MARTIN: NPR's Greg Allen is here to tell us what he's seeing. He's with us now from Brandon, Florida near Tampa. Good morning, Greg.
GREG ALLEN, BYLINE: Good morning, Michel.
MARTIN: It's still early, but what can you tell us so far about Hurricane Milton's impact?
ALLEN: Well, there's at least 3 million people without power all along the coast here. That includes where I am in Tampa Bay, south through Sarasota, and Fort Myers. Tide gauge showed a big storm surge in Venice and Sarasota. A creek in Sarasota rose by eight feet very quickly after landfall yesterday. St. Petersburg also got a stunning 19 inches of rain. So flooding is certainly an issue that we'll all be dealing with in these low-lying areas. But we won't get a good assessment of how bad it is until later today. We saw a lot of damage and deaths even before landfall, though. Milton brought an unusual number of powerful tornadoes. Governor DeSantis said there were 116 tornado warnings in Florida yesterday with 19 confirmed touchdowns. In St. Lucie County, over on Florida's East Coast, the sheriff said there were deaths from tornadoes that touched down Wednesday. Search and rescue crews were out there working through the night. So watching for tornadoes today - in Tampa Bay, we saw a lot of wind damage already. A construction crane toppled into a building in St. Petersburg and high winds shredded the roof at the Tropicana Field.
MARTIN: Wow, that sounds really devastating. You know, the hurricane made landfall a couple of hours earlier than had been forecast. What does that mean for the communities that were in its path?
ALLEN: Right. Well, you know, Governor DeSantis said that he thought it was good because it meant the storm came in before high tide, which could have made the inundation worse, but also presented a challenge for first responders.
DESANTIS: It's going to mean pretty much all the rescues are going to be done in the dark, in the middle of the night, but that's fine. They're going to do that, and they will be on target.
MARTIN: You know, Greg, one of the things I was wondering about is that hurricanes usually lose power quickly after making landfall, but Milton is still at hurricane strength as it crosses through Florida. What impact could that have?
ALLEN: As of now, it has now moved off the East Coast into the Atlantic, but it was so powerful when it came in that even after weakening, it still had hurricane force winds. So we're going to see a lot of wind damage far from the coast in Central Florida, places that don't usually see those wind speeds. There's also expected to be a lot of flash flooding because of the torrential rain, which will cause rivers and creeks to overflow. We've seen that in the past in Central Florida. Despite the high winds, Governor DeSantis was cautiously optimistic that there would be less damage to buildings, though, than many feared because Milton had been a Category 5 storm with 150 mile per hour winds, but had weakened before landfall. When it arrived, the winds were at a still-substantial 120 miles per hour. Here's the governor.
DESANTIS: It doesn't mean there's not storm surge. It doesn't mean there's not hazards. There is. It's a serious, serious storm. But in terms of some of the damage that we're going to see from wind, there just is a big difference between 140, 150, and 120.
ALLEN: And modern buildings in Florida, DeSantis said, are constructed to be able to withstand winds in 120-mile-hour range. So we'll see today.
MARTIN: That is NPR's Greg Allen in Brandon, Florida. Greg, thank you and stay safe.
ALLEN: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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