Florida is in the bullseye of Hurricane Milton. The storm was upgraded Monday morning to a Category 4.

Tampa International Airport to close before storm

Update 11:25 a.m. ET, Oct. 7: Tampa International Airport officials announced on X that the airport will suspend flight operations at 9 a.m. Tuesday with no specific time to reopen, writing, that it will “reopen when safe to do so.”

Officials also reminded people that the airport is not a shelter.

Nearly Category 5

Update 11:11 a.m. ET, Oct. 7: Hurricane Milton is nearly at a Category 5 the National Hurricane Center said in its latest update.

The NHC measured the maximum sustained winds at 155 MPH with gusts higher. A Category 5 is when winds reach 157 mph or higher. There is no Category 6.

Hurricane Milton is predicted to become a Category 5 on Monday and will “become a large hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico.” Hurricane-force winds extend up to 30 miles from the center of the storm with tropical-storm-force winds up to 80 miles from the hurricane, the NHC said.

Original report: The National Hurricane Center said the maximum sustained winds are now 150mph.

The hurricane is in the Gulf of Mexico about 735 miles southwest of Tampa, the NHC said.

Areas of Florida with major population centers — Orlando and Tampa — are within the path of the hurricane, less than two weeks since Hurricane Helene hit the state’s panhandle and drenched a large swath of the Southeast portion of the country.

The NHC predicted a dangerous storm surge for the Tampa Bay area, The Associated Press reported.

Hurricane Milton is expected to hit the Tampa Bay area on Wednesday then the storm should move across Florida to the Atlantic Ocean.

Airports prepared for the storm days before landfall. The St. Pete-Clearwater International Airport announced plans on Monday that it will close at 12:30 p.m. Tuesday and will remain closed Wednesday and Thursday.

The airport is in an area that is considered a mandatory evacuation zone. The Florida Division of Emergency Management said the state will see the largest evacuation it has seen since 2017.

“I urge Floridians to finalize your storm preparations now, enact your plan,” director Kevin Guthrie said on Sunday, CNN reported. He said he “highly” encouraged those in Florida to evacuate.

Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister told residents to start preparing over the weekend to evacuate the area on Monday.

“We’ll start issuing those mandatory evacuations. We want to give people at least 24 hours’ amount of time to get to that safe area,” Chronister said, according to CNN.

“If you want to gamble, there’s plenty of avenues to do that, but don’t gamble with you and your family’s live. Please take the necessary precautions and make sure that you relocate somewhere else,” he said.

If people decide to not evacuate and wait out the storm at home, Florida Attorney General Ashley Moody gave them a grim directive.

“You probably need to write your name in permanent marker on your arm so that people know who you are when they get to you afterwards,” Moody said, CNN reported.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said to expect widespread power outages.

“This is something that potentially would be greater power outages than what we just saw with Hurricane Helene,” DeSantis said, according to CNN.

He said electrical crews will be staged across the state to restore power quickly.

Check back for more on this developing story.

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