Milton Will Strike Florida as Major Hurricane Wednesday, Expected Impacts in Flagler; Local State of Emergency Starts at Noon

Last Updated: 8:02 a.m.

Hurricane Milton has rapidly intensified into a Category 3 hurricane in the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico as it makes its way for landfall Wednesday evening in Florida’s midsection before crossing the state as a hurricane. Models differ significantly as to landfall and direction after that. Forecasters are urging residents not to focus on the track of the storm, but on the cone of probability, with anyone within that cone potentially in Milton’s path.

Flagler County is declaring a state of emergency effective at noon today. It is already under a declared state emergency. County emergency officials are preparing for evacuations targeted to specific areas of the county, should those become necessary, and would have shelters available in that case. Officials will announce later today what areas should be prepared to evacuate–but not actually evacuate–should the storm track continue to include Flagler in its cone.

“Should we order evacuations,  they will be done by a neighborhood,” Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord said this morning.

Three days away, the path of the storm has a variability of 100 miles north or south, the National Hurricane Center cautions. “The track guidance is in good agreement that the hurricane will cross the Florida Peninsula, but there remains significant differences in both the location and timing of landfall,” the center states in its Monday morning advisory.

The American model has Milton making landfall between Tampa Bay and the Big Bend area and heading toward the Flagler-St. Johns area. The European model, which historically has been the most accurate, has landfall at or just south of Tampa and crossing the state south of the I-4 corridor. Both of those models predict landfall around 8 p.m. Wednesday. The Canadian model has it making landfall only Thursday morning further south, crossing the peninsula south of Merritt Island.

“This is one of those hurricanes that is not necessarily super easy to model,” Flagler County Emergency Management Director Jonathan Lord said this morning. “They know the general idea. They know it’s heading to the Florida peninsula. At one point in time they had the entire peninsula within the potential cone. And again, the cone is just the area where the center of the storm may be. The storm is going to be hundreds of miles wide and have impacts beyond the center of the storm. But even where the center is going to go has fluctuated a little bit. I guess the only thing that they are sure of, it is somewhere in our vicinity, the center of the storm. If you were to follow the center of a line, it does not necessarily put it directly over us, but again, we’re in that cone, and that center can be anywhere in that cone.”

Lord said that it is possible that because of the record-high temperatures of the Gulf of Mexico waters, the storm could strike land as a Category 4, with winds of 130 to 156 miles per hour. The storm’s category at landfall matters because that strength will radiate across land as it makes its way through the Peninsula. “So you’ve got to keep that in mind, because the intensity that it does make landfall does impact what it eventually means for us,” Lord said. “The storm will weaken as it moves across the state, heading kind of in a east, northeast sort of path, then potentially heading in our direction. At a minimum, we expect high end tropical storm force winds. The official forecast, if you’re looking at a certain point in Flagler County today, does not show a high risk of hurricane force winds. But there is a distinct risk that we could have hurricane-force winds.”

This is most likely going to be a Wednesday-Thursday storm for Flagler County, though the storm could yet speed up.

“That’s the key thing: I really don’t want our residents to focus on the line in the middle or the dots in the middle of the cone,” Lord said. “That really is just the middle of the cone. It does not mean the eye is going to travel there. And the eye is much larger than a dot. It can go well north of that dot, I can go well south of that.”

He said today is the day for residents to prepare their homes for sheltering. If they need to put up storm shutters, today is the day, he said.

Stetson University and the University of Central Florida have cancelled classes for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. Stetson’s classes close after 1 p.m. Tuesday. Students are required to return home, seek shelter with friends and family, or stay at a local emergency shelter–not on campus. Stetson’s fall break begins Friday, so classes will not resume until Oct. 14. There will be no university operations at UCF starting Tuesday. Current plans are to resume operations Friday.

Daytona State College, the University of North Florida and and Flagler County schools have not yet announced hurricane plans. It is likely–if not certain–that, should Flagler remain in the cone of probability, county emergency officials will follow past practices, opening at least one shelter in one of the schools, while schools would close for part of the week. Local governments were issuing preparatory alerts to residents. “If I was a betting person–obviously, Mother Nature can do whatever he or she wants at this point–but if I was a betting person, I would assume the schools are going to close at some point,” Lord said.

The Emergency Operations Center activated at Level 2 ion Sunday and is again at Level 2 today, operating from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. Level 3 is the EOC’s permanent state of monitoring, which is now made possible, thanks to technology, whether EOC itself is activated or not. Level 2 means some additional staff is brought into EOC. Level 1 is when every station at EOC is staffed, with dozens of local and state agencies at their stations. That happens before the storm makes landfall.

Nearing 8 this morning. Hurricane Milton was just under Category 4 strength, with sustained winds of 125 miles per hour and strengthening rapidly: mere hours before, it was at 100 miles per hour.

Palm Coast officials issued the following advisory:

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