Hurricane Milton nears Florida coast as rains pound state

Hurricane Milton is closing in on Florida’s west coast, packing torrential rainfall and a destructive storm surge that could inundate some of the state’s fastest-growing counties. Milton is expected to make landfall just south of Tampa Bay around 9 p.m. New York time, according to commercial forecaster AccuWeather Inc. Vertical wind shear over the Gulf of Mexico has knocked back Milton’s top winds to 120 miles (193 kilometers) per hour, leaving it a tree-snapping Category 3 storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale. The storm was 50 miles west-southwest of Sarasota as of 6 p.m., according to an update from the US National Hurricane Center. Heavy rains from the storm’s outer bands pounded central Florida for much of Wednesday, and more than 285,000 homes and businesses are already without power, according to PowerOutage.us. As of 5 p.m. New York time, more than 4,000 flights across the US have been canceled for Wednesday and Thursday, according to FlightAware, an airline tracking service. <br/>