Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton bar­relled in­to the At­lantic Ocean on Thurs­day af­ter plough­ing across Flori­da, where it left at least 5 dead, knocked out pow­er to more than 3 mil­lion cus­tomers and whipped up 150 tor­na­do warn­ings.

At present, all storm surge and trop­i­cal storm warn­ings re­lat­ed to Mil­ton have been dis­con­tin­ued.

Speak­ing to­day at the state Emer­gency Op­er­a­tions Cen­ter in Tal­la­has­see, Flori­da’s Gov. Ron De San­tis said five fa­tal­i­ties have been con­firmed from Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton.

He al­so told re­porters that the worst-case sce­nario did not hap­pen.

“The storm was sig­nif­i­cant,” he not­ed, “but thank­ful­ly, this was not the worst case sce­nario.”

“It doesn’t mean there’s not go­ing be a lot of dam­age, it doesn’t mean there’s not go­ing to be a lot we’re go­ing to have to con­tend with,” he said. “But, just in terms of what we were prepped for, I think we prob­a­bly have an abun­dance of re­sources.”

KEY POINTS TO NOTE:

—Death toll: At least 5 peo­ple died in the storm, but that num­ber could rise through­out the day, Flori­da Gov. Ron De­San­tis said in a mid-day brief­ing.

—Pow­er out­ages: More than 3 mil­lion homes and busi­ness­es are still with­out pow­er, ac­cord­ing to Power­Outages.us. Flori­da’s cen­tral Gulf Coast was hard­est hit by the out­ages, in­clud­ing Hard­ee, Sara­so­ta, Hills­bor­ough and Man­a­tee coun­ties.

—Flight can­cel­la­tions: There were more than 2,250 U.S. flight can­cel­la­tions as of mid­day Thurs­day, ac­cord­ing to track­ing ser­vice FlightAware, fol­low­ing 1,970 on Wednes­day. Air­ports are al­so slow­ly be­gin­ning to re­open fol­low­ing dam­age as­sess­ments.

All warn­ings re­lat­ed to Mil­ton have been dis­con­tin­ued

By The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

The U.S. Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter dis­con­tin­ued all storm surge and trop­i­cal storm warn­ings re­lat­ed to Mil­ton, now a post-trop­i­cal cy­clone, as of their lat­est and fi­nal ad­vi­so­ry.

Mil­ton was lo­cat­ed about 220 miles (335 kilo­me­tres) north­east of Great Aba­co Is­land, one of the Ba­hama’s north­most is­lands, and was mov­ing east away from Flori­da’s coast­line at 21 mph (33 kph) as of 5 p.m. Thurs­day. It has sus­tained winds of 70 mph (110 kph) and was ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue weak­en­ing, the hur­ri­cane cen­ter said.

Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton spawned de­struc­tive, dead­ly tor­na­does be­fore mak­ing land­fall

By SUMAN NAISHAD­HAM, IS­ABEL­LA O’MAL­LEY

Mul­ti­ple pow­er­ful tor­na­does ripped across Flori­da hours be­fore Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton made land­fall Wednes­day, tear­ing off roofs, over­turn­ing ve­hi­cles and suck­ing de­bris in­to the air as the black V-shaped columns moved through.

Dozens of tor­na­does spawned by Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton caught many Florid­i­ans by sur­prise as they braced for heavy rain, strong winds and es­pe­cial­ly storm surges. Vi­o­lent twisters were seen cross­ing high­ways, rip­ping off roofs and down­ing trees and pow­er lines.

There have been 38 pre­lim­i­nary eye­wit­ness re­ports of tor­na­does since Wednes­day night, ac­cord­ing to the Na­tion­al Ocean­ic and At­mos­pher­ic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Storm Pre­dic­tion Cen­ter. Flori­da sees a to­tal of 50 tor­na­does on av­er­age in a whole year. The num­ber con­firmed is ex­pect­ed to rise over the com­ing days as dam­aged sites are as­sessed.

The eye­wit­ness re­ports came as the Na­tion­al Weath­er Ser­vice is­sued 126 tor­na­do warn­ings in the state Wednes­day.

“Cer­tain­ly that will be a no­table part of this storm, was how many tor­na­does oc­curred with­in such a short pe­ri­od,” said Matthew El­liott, warn­ing co­or­di­na­tion me­te­o­rol­o­gist at the Storm Pre­dic­tion Cen­ter.

Gov. De­San­tis prais­es Flori­da’s re­silience

By JEFF MAR­TIN

“You face two hur­ri­canes in a cou­ple of weeks — not easy to go through — but I’ve seen a lot of re­silience through­out this state,” Flori­da Gov. Ron De­San­tis said at a Thurs­day af­ter­noon brief­ing in Sara­so­ta.

“When you’re a Florid­i­an, you kind of just know that these are things that can hap­pen and you roll with it and you just kind of deal with it,” he said.

“I’ve seen a lot of grit, I’ve seen a lot of de­ter­mi­na­tion and I’m very con­fi­dent that this area is go­ing to bounce back very, very quick­ly.”

Gov. De­San­tis says at least 340 peo­ple and 49 pets have been res­cued in on­go­ing search-and-res­cue op­er­a­tions

By JEFF MAR­TIN

At a Thurs­day af­ter­noon brief­ing in Sara­so­ta, De­San­tis said that af­ter fly­ing over some of the hard-hit ar­eas, he saw that many of the homes built in re­cent years fared well in the storm.

“An­oth­er thing I think I can say — our build­ings that were built in the last 20 or 30 years, they did very well,” he said.

Tam­pa In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port plans to re­open Fri­day, al­though Mil­ton dam­aged six jet bridges used to board planes

By DAVID KOENIG

Al­so, crews are re­pair­ing leaks in the main ter­mi­nal.

The air­port said the Fed­er­al Avi­a­tion Ad­min­is­tra­tion cleared the con­trol tow­er to re­sume full op­er­a­tions, roads and park­ing garages are in good shape, and there are no is­sues with the waste­water sys­tem. The air­port’s fu­el de­pot lost pow­er and is run­ning on gen­er­a­tor pow­er while re­pairs are un­der­way.

Tam­pa po­lice of­fi­cers on Thurs­day morn­ing dis­cov­ered the body of a woman in her 70s un­der­neath a tree branch

By FREI­DA FRIS­ARO

The of­fi­cers were in­ves­ti­gat­ing re­ports of a large tree branch that had fall­en when they found the woman. She was pro­nounced dead at the scene.

Tam­pa Po­lice Chief Lee Bercaw said the death ap­peared to be the re­sult of post-hur­ri­cane restora­tion ef­forts. The woman’s name wasn’t im­me­di­ate­ly re­leased.

“Al­though the storm has passed, its dev­as­ta­tion has trag­i­cal­ly tak­en the life of one of our com­mu­ni­ty mem­bers,” the po­lice chief said.

Pres­i­dent Biden says he wants Con­gress to act as quick­ly as pos­si­ble to ap­prove more dis­as­ter re­sponse fund­ing

By NAN­CY BENAC

But he stopped short of say­ing he’d or­der law­mak­ers to re­turn from re­cess ear­ly.

Speak­ing to re­porters at the White House about the fed­er­al re­sponse to Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton’s de­struc­tion, Biden sin­gled out ur­gent fund­ing need­ed by the Small Busi­ness Ad­min­is­tra­tion, which of­fers low-cost loans to busi­ness­es dam­aged in storms.

“I think, in terms of the SBA, it’s pret­ty right at the edge right now,” Biden said. “And I think the Con­gress should be com­ing back and mov­ing on emer­gency needs im­me­di­ate­ly.”

But asked di­rect­ly if he was or­der­ing Con­gress to re­turn ear­ly, Biden was non­com­mit­tal, say­ing on­ly, “I think con­gress should move as rapid­ly as they can.”

Mil­ton’s land­fall marked the 6th time in his­to­ry that Flori­da had three hur­ri­canes make land­fall in a sin­gle year

By CHRISTO­PHER KELLER

That’s ac­cord­ing to Col­orado State Uni­ver­si­ty se­nior re­search sci­en­tist Phil Klotzbach.

The oth­ers were in 1871, 1886, 1964, 2004 and, 2005.

In 2004, the state near­ly had four hur­ri­canes make land­fall in a sin­gle year, Klotzbach said. But while Charley, Frances and Jeanne made land­fall in Flori­da, Ivan made land­fall in Al­aba­ma, just west of the Al­aba­ma-Flori­da bor­der.