Despite the hasty nature of most evacuations ahead of Hurricane Milton which was a Category 5 storm but has been downgraded to a Category 4 as of 8 am EDT Wednesday, evacuations proved orderly which has not always been the case.

Milton is likely to make landfall somewhere in Sarasota or possibly Manatee County. While the official storm track from the National Hurricane Center has shifted every advisory, model guidance for the better part of 24 hours has indicated a landfall somewhere between Longboat Key and Venice- a fairly tight range. The storm is likely to make landfall as a Category 4 and then lose intensity rapidly upon land interaction.

Based on this projected path it is entirely possible if the storm were to say make landfall near Osprey that Hurricane force winds will only clip the Orlando and Tampa Bay area – but in that case those two massive metropolitan areas are likely to get doused with the heavy rains from the northern side of the storm – and in the case of the Orlando area the ground is heavily saturated after this weekend’s tropical weather which I experienced while in the Orlando area a few days ago.

In terms of the Orlando area, this has the possibility of being the worst storm since Irma in 2017 or perhaps even worse. For the Tampa Bay area, you will not see the storm surge Helene brought but will have heavy rains and winds – perhaps the highest the area has experienced in a 100 years. For Southwest Florida this could be an absolute disaster.

Tropical Storm Winds are expected from about Fort Lauderdale all the way to Jacksonville on the east coast and from Naples all the way to Cedar Key on the west.

We already have a Tornado Warning this morning for parts of Collier, Broward and Miami-Dade.

Keep tuned to me Twitter @kkfla737 which only gets activated during Florida storms and @FlaSqueeze for real time updates