Hurricane Milton: Florida City Gets Month’s Worth of Rain in One Hour

The Florida city of St. Petersburg received nearly twice its average monthly rainfall in just one hour, when it was battered by Hurricane Milton.
Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday, bringing with it winds of more than 100 mph, dangerous storm surge and heavy rainfall.
St. Petersburg, in the Tampa Bay region, reported 5.09 inches of precipitation in just 60 minutes, according to The Weather Channel and MyRadar meteorologist Matthew Cappucci.
This is nearly twice the 2.3 inches of monthly rainfall St. Petersburg experiences on average in October, as recorded by Weather and Climate.
Milton brought more than 16 inches of rain in total to St. Petersburg, which triggered a National Weather Service warning about flash flooding, according to the Associated Press.
St. Petersburg has clearly been hit hard, with pictures and videos of Milton’s destruction in the city spreading across the internet.
The roof of Tropicana Field, the baseball stadium of the Tampa Bay Rays was ripped off, and images showed parts of it shredded and blowing in the wind.
A crane collapsed on a luxury building under construction in downtown St. Petersburg, where the Tampa Bay Times is based. Images on social media show the fallen crane and the debris from the building lying on the street. Storm chaser Jeff Piotrowski described the damage to multiple floors as “catastrophic.”
Neighboring Tampa was hit with 11.43 inches of rainfall on Wednesday, breaking the city’s monthly rainfall record in just one day. Tampa’s previous wettest October was in 1922, when it received 10.33 inches of rain, The Weather Channel reported.
Milton was forecast to dump around 18 inches of rain across Florida, and the National Weather Service warned about “the risk of considerable flash and urban flooding along with moderate to major river flooding, especially in areas where coastal and inland flooding combine to increase the overall flood threat.”
Tornadoes were hitting parts of Florida before Milton even made landfall. Around 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane came ashore, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, Kevin Guthrie, said. Many of the properties were senior citizens’ mobile homes.
More than 3 million homes and businesses had lost power in Florida by late Wednesday, according to PowerOutages.us.
People have been warned about life-threatening storm surges, hurricane-force winds, especially in gusts, and heavy rainfall.
At least 15 counties in Florida are under mandatory evacuation orders, affecting a total of around 7.2 million people.
Deaths have been reported at the Spanish Lakes Country Club near Fort Pierce but the numbers are still unclear.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis said at a press conference in Tallahassee: “Unfortunately, there will be fatalities. I don’t think there’s any way around that.”