Hurricane Milton ripped through Florida Wednesday evening, leaving a trail of destruction, flooding and power outages. The extent of the damages can’t yet be quantified, but here are some key figures surrounding the storm.
205 km/h wind
The storm made landfall at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday as a Category 3 hurricane, bringing with it sustained winds of 205 km/h, according to the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
53 tornado warnings
The U.S. National Weather Service had issued 53 tornado warnings across Florida by Wednesday afternoon.
45 centimetres of rain
The storm brought up to 45 centimetres of rain to spots in the Tampa and St. Petersburg area.
2.5 to 3 metres of storm surge
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis said the storm surge reached between eight and 10 feet (2.5 to 3 metres) in areas near the landfall in Sarasota County.
7.2 million people
Mandatory evacuation orders across 15 Florida counties affected a total population of about 7.2 million people.
3 million homes
More than 3 million homes and businesses were without electricity Thursday, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks outages across the country.
50,000 utility workers
Gov. DeSantis said over 50,000 utility workers from as far as California and 9,000 National Guard members from Florida and other states were deployed to deal with the storm’s destruction.
