It was located 485 km southwest of Tampa, a city on the west coast of Florida, on Wednesday morning (0900 GMT), with sustained winds reaching 260 km/h, according to the US National Hurricane Center (NHC).
Milton is expected to make landfall Wednesday night and “is expected to remain an extremely dangerous major hurricane when it reaches the west-central Florida coast,” according to the NHC.
It could be “the worst storm in Florida in a century,” Joe Biden warned on Tuesday, on the sidelines of a meeting at the White House on the subject.
“You must evacuate now, it is a question of life and death,” the American president said to the residents of the third most populous state in the country.
A sign of the seriousness of the situation, the White House announced that Joe Biden had decided not to go as planned at the end of the week to Germany and then to Angola.
The striking images of the “extremely dangerous” Hurricane Milton seen from the sky (VIDEO)
“Everyone is leaving”
Milton’s arrival comes as the Florida peninsula was already affected at the end of September by the passage of another hurricane, Helene.
The latter caused at least 235 deaths across the southeast of the United States and caused considerable damage.
Climate change makes rapid intensification of storms more likely and increases the risk of more powerful hurricanes by warming sea and ocean waters, scientists say.
Temperatures in the North Atlantic have been continuously evolving for more than a year at record levels of heat, according to data from the American Meteorological Observatory (NOAA).
Helen’s torrential rains and powerful winds were made 10% more intense by climate change, according to a report released Wednesday by the group World Weather Attribution (WWA).
Storms of the magnitude of Hurricane Helen were previously predicted once every 130 years, while today their probability is closer to once every 53 years, on average.
In Florida, generators, food, water and tarpaulins have been distributed, while many residents plan to leave the area.
“Everyone is leaving. I’m going to leave, not right away but probably later in the evening, just to be safe because I have children,” Sam Lee, a plumber from 43 years old.
John Gomez, 75, ignored the advice of authorities and traveled from Chicago to try to save a second house he owns in Florida. “I think it’s better to be here in case something happens,” he said.
Fuel shortages in Florida as residents evacuate as Hurricane Milton arrives (PHOTOS)
“No empathy”
Katie, in her thirties, evacuated the coastal city of St Petersburg with her five-year-old son and dog to reach Orlando, inland. Hurricane Helene flooded her house two weeks ago. “I’m not taking any risks this time,” she told AFP.
In Orlando, a large tourist city in central Florida, Disney announced the closure of its theme parks from 1 p.m. Wednesday (5 p.m. GMT).
In the middle of the presidential campaign, these hurricanes took a political turn. After Hélène’s visit, Republican candidate Donald Trump was quick to accuse the federal state, led by Democrats, of having done too little, too late, to provide assistance to the victims.
The Republican had notably accused the Democrats of having “stolen money” from the federal natural disaster response agency (Fema), “in order to be able to give it to their illegal immigrants”.
“Don’t you have any empathy for people’s suffering?” replied her Democratic rival in the November election, Kamala Harris, during an interview Tuesday evening.
