An interactive tracker has revealed the current and future path of Hurricane Milton as the deadly storm powers through the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida.
The tracker now shows Milton surging just north of Mexico's port city of Campeche as it gathers steam on its northeastern trajectory towards Florida's western coast.
Milton is currently producing as much as 2-3 inches of precipitation per hour close to the eye of the storm (as of 1pm Eastern time), building momentum as it barrels toward Tampa where the storm is expected to make landfall Wednesday morning.
Meteorologists anticipate life-threatening, nine-foot-high storm surges and winds of up to 150 miles-per-hour (mph) as this once-rare Category 5 crashes into Florida.
As many as six million residents are under hurricane watch warnings, with many being ordered to evacuate — even as commercial air travel hubs like Tampa International Airport plan early closures in advance of the storm.
Weather data visualization firm Ventusky is actively synthesizing meteorological data to chart and predict Hurricane Milton's path of destruction with its tracker, below.
Data scientists and representatives for Ventusky explained that Hurricane Milton's forecast was 'unusual' because it was happening nearly in parallel to the impact of Hurricane Kirk's waning stormfront as it prepares to smack into southwestern France.
'In just 24 hours, Hurricane Milton intensified from a tropical storm to a Major Category 4 hurricane,' the weather data company posted to their account of X.com.
'Its formation is clearly visible on the satellite at night, with a cloudless eye quickly forming in the center,' the firm noted in their post of the overnight video.
Cities along the west Florida coast, from Spring Hill to the north to Cape Coral in the south — including Tampa, St. Petersburg and Venice — are all set to face the worst of Hurricane Milton's impact as it charges through the state Wednesday.
The worst of the storm's impact, based on Ventusky's modelling, will continue on into the early morning hours Thursday, with the eye of the storm plowing through central Florida before passing its eastern coastline sometime after 5am Eastern.
Meteorologists use the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to delineate and define these storms into five categories of increasing severity.
The infamous Hurricane Katrina which devastated New Orleans in 2005, was only a Category 1 storm with wind speeds reaching somewhere between 74 and 95 mph — enough to critically breach the levees that flooded the city.
As a Category 5, Milton will more closely resemble 1992's Hurricane Andrew and 2018's Hurricane Michael: two of the rare hurricanes to have hit the United States as a Category 5 since 1900, according to the National Weather Service.
As a Category 5, Hurricane Andrew destroyed 99 percent of all the mobile homes (1167 out of 1176 homes) in the city of Homestead in southern Florida's Miami-Dade County, to cite one example of such a storm's destructive capacity.
At least 15 direct deaths and 28 indirect deaths were attributed to Andrew during its catastrophic pummeling of the mainland US.
Forecasters expect Hurricane Milton to be no less deadly.
The US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) reported Monday that it has devoted over $210 million in resources to aid communities recover and rebuild from the recent devastation of Hurricane Helene.
'As FEMA maintains its focus on Helene response and recovery, the agency is also pre-positioning resources to support local and state response efforts ahead of Hurricane Milton,' a FEMA spokesperson said.
Florida residents seeking help are urged to call the State Assistance Information Line (SAIL) at 1-800-342-3557 and/or the FEMA Helpline at 1-800-621-3362.
