Would our Florida jellies be so kind as to let us know you’re OK when you can?

5:30pm EDT in The Villages, FL and outer bands coming through. Light wind is constant now with some stronger gusts and rain comes through periodically.

It feels circular. It’s an odd thing about hurricanes that the rain starts and stops with the outer bands and literally feels circular. Eventually it will just feel constant and build unless the direction drastically changes.

The 5:00 update downgraded Milton to a cat 3, hopefully it goes down to a 2 before landfall, but that is not expected. Landfall is when the eye hits the land.

I’m expecting tropical storm force or cat 1 where I live. If it shifts north I could wind up in a cat 2 eye wall, but I think that’s very doubtful.

Just started to really change. Much stronger constant wind now. 6:40pm. Raining also.

Stay safe!

I think Cupcake also lives in FL.

If she does, I hope her area will be unaffected by Uncle Milty. ;-)

9 PM Eastern time. The storm has made landfall.

Just lost my electricity. 9:15pm and a neighbor somewhere behind me has a noisy generator on! Ugh. I don’t remember ever having to listen to a generator at night during a storm.

Wind continues to strengthen.

Cupcake will definitely be affected.

The eye looks like it is coming towards my area, hoping it will turn more east. It will die down to a cat 2 or 1 by the time it’s near me probably.

Tropicana Field (stadium) in St. Petersburg part of the roof tore off. It was a staging area for first responders from what I understand, but didn’t have people or not a lot if people when it tore off. https://youtu.be/M_2ZNsvn9rI?si=hfoYQNX9MpyNCy37

The radio is saying Orlando and my area are in the worst of it right now. It’s bad, stuff banging around outside and vents on my house banging too.

Winds are probably 75–80mph here. Relentless.

The storm is just starting to become less organized according to the radio, but still rotating.

I won’t hear anything about my family in Largo for probably a few hours. Please send good thoughts, everybody.

Grateful for Facebook this morning. They just posted, house still standing, everyone OK.

My electricity just came back on at 11:30am. My other house never lost electricity.

My immediate neighbors on my left and right had segments of roof tiles blow off. That must be what we heard hitting our house last night. If it had hit a window it would have probably broken one. Ugh. I really need shutters. It’s crazy. In South Florida we had them. I have very minor damage on one side of my house that is superficial.

I didn’t see any flooding here when I drove to my other house but retention lakes and preserves were extremely high. Some preserves that are often dry were like swamps.

That hurricane really held together going across the state. I hope that is the last for the season. Hell, the last for a few years.

Alah be praised!