Hurricane Milton may be hours away from its expected catastrophic landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast late Wednesday night, but the monster Category 4 storm has already started to impact the state and spawned a potentially deadly tornado outbreak as bands of flooding rain and severe weather sweep in.

Conditions will deteriorate as the hurricane continues its potentially life-threatening assault, and the time to prepare and evacuate is essentially over as the storm sits more than 100 miles off Florida’s southwestern coast.

According to the National Hurricane Center, Milton is growing in size as it approaches the west coast of Florida.
Hurricane Milton is now on a collision course with Florida, with devastating impacts expected. Landfall is likely along Florida's Gulf Coast somewhere between Madeira Beach and Port Charlotte. The forecast calls for up to 15 feet of storm surge inundation around the Tampa Bay area.

We should not downplay the weakening, because as the storm weakens, its wind field will expand, causing more widespread damaging winds and storm surge. And the impacts won’t dramatically lessen as the storm begins to weaken. The water in the Gulf of Mexico is already churning, moving toward the Florida Gulf Coast, and this won’t change as the storm approaches the coast.

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