Janelle Irwin Taylor
The entire Tampa Bay area is under a tornado watch until 9 p.m. on Wednesday as bands from Hurricane Milton sweep through the area throughout the day ahead of anticipated landfall Wednesday night.
The watch applies to Hillsborough, Manatee, Pinellas, Polk and Sarasota counties, as well as several counties south of the Tampa Bay region.
The watch is in response to severe weather passing through the area from the outskirts of Hurricane Milton as it approaches the Florida peninsula.
It was issued shortly after the 8 a.m. advisory on Hurricane Milton, which found the storm with sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. The storm, as of the advisory, was about 250 miles southwest of Tampa and moving northeast at 16 miles per hour.
A hurricane warning is in effect for the entire Tampa Bay region, as well as parts of Southwest Florida and parts of Florida’s east coast. Milton is expected to exit the eastern part of the state sometime Thursday as a hurricane.
A hurricane warning means hurricane conditions are expected in the area within 36 hours.
A storm surge warning is also in effect for most of Florida’s west coast, from Flamingo north to Yankeetown, including Tampa Bay and Charlotte Harbor.
A storm surge warning means there is a danger of life-threatening inundation from rising water moving inland over the next 36 hours. The warning applies most acutely to coastal and low-lying areas.
Landfall is expected somewhere along the west-central Gulf Coast sometime late Wednesday or early Thursday as a Category 4 hurricane.
Hurricane-force winds extend 30 miles from the center of the storm, with tropical-storm-force winds extending 125 miles.
Under the 8 a.m. advisory, the Tampa Bay area is slated to receive 8-12 feet of storm surge, though that number depends largely on landfall. Meteorologists expect the worst surge to occur at landfall and south of the eye, meaning if the storm makes landfall south of Tampa Bay, surge levels could be lower.
However, meteorologists caution that it is near impossible to predict exactly where the storm will ultimately make landfall and projections thus far have moved around between the Pinellas County coast to further south in Sarasota County.
As of the most recent advisory, the area from Anna Maria Island to Boca Grande is slated for the worst storm surge, at 10-15 feet.
Localized flooding is also possible with extensive rain totals expected throughout the day. The current forecast predicts 6-12 inches of rainfall, with up to 18 inches in some isolated areas.
“This rainfall brings the risk of catastrophic and life-threatening flash and urban flooding, along with moderate to major river flooding,” the advisory notes.
The next advisory from the National Hurricane Center will be issued at 11 a.m.
