Hurricane Milton: Florida faces another major storm

• The area under greatest threat for landfall includes Tampa-St. Petersburg, including Sarasota, as well as areas north to Crystal River and south to Naples.
• The forecast track has shifted slightly south as of Sunday, but Tampa is still in the crosshairs. A direct hit on Tampa could be extremely damaging for that storm surge-prone city.
• It would pile storm surge waters into the bay, threatening critical infrastructure along the water.

Between the lines: The storm will hit a state, and a country, already reeling and mobilized to respond to the distruction Hurricane Helene caused across a vast expanse after making landfall late on Sept. 26.

• Milton is likely to test FEMA's limits, as well as state agencies, to respond to back-to-back disasters.

What's happening: Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Sunday expanded his emergency management executive order to cover 51 of the state's 67 counties.

• "I don't think there's any scenario where we don't have major impacts at this point," he said at a Sunday news conference.
• In Pinellas County, where up to 7 feet of storm surge swept into beachside homes during Hurricane Helene, authorities issued mandatory evacuation orders for health care facilities on Sunday. More orders will be issued as Hurricane Milton nears, per the Florida Division of Emergency Management.
• Schools and colleges in areas set to be impacted by the storm announced planned closures ahead of Hurricane Milton hitting the state.

Stunning stat: The Atlantic now has three hurricanes simultaneously after September (Milton, Kirk and Leslie) for the first time since record-keeping began, per Phil Klotzbach, a meteorologist at Colorado State University.

No major hurricane has struck Tampa from the west since at least 1921.

• The last direct hit there from a storm in the Gulf was in the 1940s.
• Many meteorologists have long regarded Tampa as among the most vulnerable major cities in the U.S. to hurricanes, due to the storm surge threat and lack of a modern storm for people to reference when preparing.

Yes, but: Milton is a compact hurricane, and is nowhere near as large as Hurricane Helene was. However, it is forecast to grow in size as it approaches Florida.

• It's unlikely to impact the southern Appalachians or hard-hit areas of Georgia and South Carolina.
• There is also considerable forecast uncertainty about where it will come ashore and at what intensity. The surge will be maximized along and south of where the storm's center crosses the coast.
• As of Sunday afternoon, computer models show the storm moving off the eastern coast of Florida by the end of the week.

Each hurricane threat is different, and past storms — Helene or otherwise — aren't a reliable guide for this next one. That's especially the case in this era of climate change-worsened storms.

The big picture: The National Hurricane Center in Miami noted in an online forecast discussion Sunday afternoon that its track forecasts can be off by an average of about 100 miles three days ahead of landfall.

• Milton poses a potential worst-case scenario for storm surge flooding in highly populated portions of Florida's west coast.
• It also is likely to bring high winds and a soaking 5 to 15 inches of rainfall that could fall across much of the state. The flooding threat is already beginning, not directly associated with the storm, however.
• Southeastern Florida, including Miami and West Palm Beach, are included in that heavy rain threat zone.

Zoom in: Conditions are ripe for the storm to rapidly intensify as it moves from southwest to the east-northeast across the ultra-warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico.

• Because Milton is such a small storm in area for the time being, it may be prone to rapid intensification and some swift weakening at times. How those trends play out over time will help determine the severity of its impacts in Florida.
• The NHC takes the storm to a Category 4 before it weakens to a Category 3 storm near landfall. Forecasters noted, however, that this intensity forecast may actually be conservative.

What they're saying: "There is an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge and damaging winds for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning early Wednesday," the Hurricane Center stated at 5pm ET on Sunday.

The bottom line: While Hurricane Milton isn't likely to have as broad of an impact as Hurricane Helene, in terms of its geographical reach, it could be a fierce, history-making storm that requires preparations to begin immediately in parts of Florida.

Go deeper: Milton could be the hurricane Tampa Bay has been dreading for decades

Editor's note: This article has been updated with more details on the weather forecast and officials' responses to the hurricane's threat.