Milton leaves millions without power, snarls flights

Hurricane Milton roared ashore in Florida near Sarasota late Wednesday killing at least 10, knocking out power to more than 3m customers and causing widespread flooding. But officials were cautiously optimistic that damage won’t reach the level wrought by Hurricane Ian in 2022. Governor Ron DeSantis said Florida avoided a “worst-case scenario” even as emergency crews start assessing damages and dealing with widespread power outages. In addition to Milton’s wrath, the hurricane spawned a rash of tornadoes across central Florida Wednesday afternoon. Between the hurricane impacts and the tornadoes, damages and losses may reach between $60b to $75b, said Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler with Enki Research. Ian, which struck near where Milton came ashore, killed at least 156 people and caused more than $112b in damage and losses in September 2022, according to the US National Hurricane Center. Milton is the fifth hurricane and second major storm to strike the US Gulf Coast this year. Overall, the six-month Atlantic hurricane season has produced 13 named storms, one less than on average. However, Hurricane Helene, which hit exactly two weeks ago, destroyed a large swath of the US South and led to at least 230 deaths. The impact of that storm together with Milton is likely to tax federal emergency funds and flood insurance programs. As of 3:30 p.m. New York time, about 3.1 million customers were without power across Florida, down from 3.4 million earlier, according to PowerOutage.us. In addition, 2,718 flights around the US were canceled through Friday, most of them serving Orlando, Tampa, Palm Beach, Miami and Southwest Florida International, said FlightAware, an airline tracking service. <br/>