Evacuation

We evacuated early this morning leaving our house in the middle of the path of Hurricane Milton, which is anticipated to make landfall a little north of us Wednesday night and into the early hours of Thursday.

We are used to hurricanes and weathered many in our time in Bermuda, but this feels entirely different probably because we don’t know what to expect and mostly because this storm packs life threatening storm surge of which the west coast of Florida has never seen.

We feel very anxious, but are safely ensconced in a hotel on the east coast of Florida. The skies here are dank and rainy, but we are south of the probability cone which covers pretty much the entirety of the Florida peninsula. A large glass of wine has my name on it tonight.

Millions of people are on the roads travelling north from Tampa and south-east to Miami in the direction we went. We left early morning and I suspect many would’ve driven overnight so our drive was nowhere near as bad as I anticipated it to be.

Back home everything was quiet apart from neighbours packing up their cars. We are about 600m from the inland waterway across from Siesta and Casey Key’s, both severely damaged in Helene. Plenty of people will ignore mandatory evacuation’s I am sure, and although I understand people want to sit tight, almost everyone does that in Bermuda, I am glad that we evacuated.

Milton reached Cat 5 status yesterday, with winds reaching 185mph, and is currently a 4 (wind speed 150mph) and will make landfall as a 3 (winds of 125mph), but it is the resultant storm surge that is the biggest concern.

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) is predicting storm surge as high as 15 feet for Tampa Bay, Clearwater, St. Petersburg, Bradenton, Sarasota and down as far as Englewood.

That is a vast area, but the storm is wide, but is liable to change at any turn, and the slightest change in direction can bring very different outcomes for better or worse. It has only just made it’s turn north-east from the tip of Mexico.

Once Milton has blown through the barrier islands and the west coast Cat 2 hurricane force winds (110mph) will continue over Orlando and through Cape Canaveral bringing up to 15 inches of rain causing flash flooding.

If that’s not enough it then heads off to Bermuda, where I am supposed to be next week.