Source: THE AS­SO­CI­AT­ED PRESS

A mighty Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton is fling­ing rain and winds at the Tam­pa Bay area Wednes­day on its steady and po­ten­tial­ly cat­a­stroph­ic march to­ward the west coast of Flori­da, where of­fi­cials sound­ed ur­gent warn­ings for res­i­dents to evac­u­ate or face grim odds of sur­vival.

KEY POINTS TO NOTE:

—Land­fall: It’s not cer­tain where Mil­ton’s cen­tre will come ashore Wednes­day night be­cause the storm’s path might “wob­ble,” fore­cast­ers say, but the en­tire Tam­pa Bay re­gion and points south are at grave risk.

—Tor­na­does: Ap­par­ent tor­na­does touched down Wednes­day in the Ever­glades and Fort My­ers. Fore­cast­ers warn more could ap­pear across cen­tral and south­ern Flori­da.

—Evac­u­a­tions: Au­thor­i­ties have is­sued manda­to­ry evac­u­a­tion or­ders across 11 Flori­da coun­ties with a pop­u­la­tion of about 5.9 mil­lion peo­ple and warned that any­one stay­ing be­hind must fend for them­selves.

The fol­low­ing are the lat­est up­dates from The As­so­ci­at­ed Press over the past cou­ple of hours…

Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton is down­grad­ed to Cat­e­go­ry 3 but still a grave threat to Flori­da

By The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Mil­ton was down­grad­ed to a Cat­e­go­ry 3 hur­ri­cane Wednes­day but re­mained a ma­jor storm and a grave threat as it closed in on Flori­da’s west coast, where of­fi­cials sound­ed ur­gent warn­ings for res­i­dents to flee in­land or face grim odds of sur­viv­ing the storm’s surge.

Steady rain fell and winds gust­ed as Mil­ton drew clos­er to the Tam­pa Bay re­gion, which is home to more than 3.3 mil­lion peo­ple and hasn’t seen a di­rect hit from a ma­jor hur­ri­cane in more than a cen­tu­ry.

Mil­ton has fluc­tu­at­ed in strength as it ap­proached, but re­gard­less of the dis­tinc­tion in wind speeds, the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter said it would be a ma­jor and ex­treme­ly dan­ger­ous storm when its cen­tre makes land­fall late Wednes­day.

Mil­ton was cen­tred about 100 miles (155 kilo­me­tres) south­west of Tam­pa with max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 125 mph (205 kph), the Cen­ter re­port­ed.

In Cu­ba, Mil­ton is caus­ing flood­ing in low-ly­ing ar­eas

By AN­DREA RO­DRIGUEZ

On Ha­vana’s Malecón and Aveni­da del Puer­to, some peo­ple were watch­ing the force of the sea as the low-ly­ing area be­gan flood­ing, even though they knew the hur­ri­cane was far from Cu­ba.

“This is some­thing very big. It draws my at­ten­tion,” Jorge Tay­lor, a 57-year-old builder who was pass­ing by the Malecón and was sur­prised by a wave that hit his arm, told The As­so­ci­at­ed Press at mid­day Wednes­day. “This could get much more dan­ger­ous.”

Some young peo­ple were even play­ing with the waves that were jump­ing on the Malecón.

A kilo­me­tre in­land from Ha­vana Bay, fish­er­man Car­los Batal­la, 61, didn’t stop his fish­ing work, tak­ing ad­van­tage of the fact that the rains had stopped, but he warned that it looked “ug­ly” to­wards the sea be­cause his col­leagues had tied up the small boats from which they usu­al­ly catch the fish.

Trop­i­cal storm-force winds from Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton be­gin lash­ing Flori­da

By The As­so­ci­at­ed Press

Trop­i­cal storm-force winds have be­gun lash­ing the west­ern coast of Flori­da as Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton draws clos­er, the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter said in an ad­vi­so­ry Wednes­day af­ter­noon.

Of­fi­cials said at 3 p.m. that the Cat­e­go­ry 4 storm’s cen­ter was 120 miles (193 kilo­me­tres) south­west of Tam­pa and 110 miles (177 kilo­me­tres) west of Fort My­ers. It had max­i­mum sus­tained winds of 130 mph (209 kph).

The storm is ex­pect­ed to make land­fall Wednes­day night.

As Mil­ton ap­proach­es, storm watch­ers are al­so con­cerned about an­oth­er sys­tem that could form

By PATRICK WHIT­TLE

Storm watch­ers prepar­ing for Hur­ri­cane Mil­ton were al­so con­cerned about the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a fu­ture storm, as the Na­tion­al Hur­ri­cane Cen­ter said it was mon­i­tor­ing an­oth­er sys­tem that could form in the At­lantic.

But that storm sys­tem, which was lo­cat­ed about 300 miles (482 kilo­me­tres) west-south­west of Bermu­da on Wednes­day af­ter­noon, hasn’t been giv­en a name yet and the chance of it form­ing a cy­clone over the next 48 hours was “low,” the cen­ter said.

“En­vi­ron­men­tal con­di­tions are be­com­ing less favourable for trop­i­cal or sub­trop­i­cal de­vel­op­ment to­day,” the cen­ter said in its state­ment.

Still, the pos­si­ble for­ma­tion of an­oth­er hur­ri­cane brought anx­i­ety to res­i­dents al­ready fa­tigued by the quick suc­ces­sion of He­lene and Mil­ton. Mil­ton was the 13th named storm of the hur­ri­cane sea­son, and the next hur­ri­cane could be called Hur­ri­cane Na­dine.

NOAA fore­cast 17 to 25 named storms for this year. That would con­sti­tute an above nor­mal hur­ri­cane sea­son.