An expanding Hurricane Milton has turned toward Florida's battered Gulf Coast, where more than one million people were ordered to evacuate a day before the storm is forecast to hit the Tampa Bay area.
The hurricane, which is forecast to make landfall tomorrow night, regained power to become a Category 5 storm with maximum sustained winds of 270km/ph, according to the National Hurricane Center.
"Fluctuations in intensity are likely while Milton moves across the eastern Gulf of Mexico, but Milton is expected to be a dangerous, major hurricane when it reaches the west-central coast of Florida Wednesday night," the agency said.
Milton threatens a stretch of Florida's densely populated west coast that is still reeling from the devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.
A direct hit on the bay would be the first since 1921, when the now-sprawling Tampa-St Petersburg-Clearwater area was a relative backwater.
Tampa Bay Mayor Jane Castor warned residents not to try to ride out the storm.
"Individuals that are in a single-story home, 12 feet is above that," she said, referring to the predicted storm surge. "So if you're in it, basically, that's the coffin that you are in."
Less than two weeks ago, Helene hit the Gulf Coast's barrier islands and beaches, sweeping away tons of sand, knocking down dunes and blowing away dune grass. That could exacerbate Milton's storm surge, according to Isaac Longley, a meteorologist with the commercial forecasting company AccuWeather.
"There's no gradual slope left to mitigate any of it," Mr Longley said.
Dump trucks have been working 24 hours a day to remove mounds of debris left by Helene for fear Milton could turn them into dangerous projectiles, Governor Ron De Santis said. 5,000 National Guard members have been deployed, with another 3,000 on hand for the storm's aftermath.
President Joe Biden postponed his 10 to 15 October trip to Germany and Angola to oversee storm preparation and response, the White House said. Mr Biden urged those under evacuation orders to leave immediately, saying it was a matter of life and death.
"This could be the worst storm to hit Florida in over a century, and God-willing it won't be, but it's looking like that right now," Mr Biden said.
He added that he has approved pre-landfall emergency declarations in Florida and is calling on airlines to accommodate evacuations and not engage in price-gouging.
As of this afternoon, nearly 900 domestic and international flights in the US were delayed, and nearly 700 were cancelled. More than 1,500 flights scheduled for tomorrow have already been cancelled, according to flight-tracking data provider Flight Aware.
Musician John O'Leary, 38, was securing his Tampa townhouse and packing for a road trip with his girlfriend to New Port Richey, about 64km north. He was worried about his baby grand piano, which he had to leave behind.
They plan to stay with friends who have a home on high ground but will keep an eye on the storm's path and may head farther north.
"This storm is so strong, big, it's unreal," he said. "We're in survival mode."
State ferryboat operator Ken Wood, 58, spent this morning packing up his truck in the Gulf city of Dunedin about 39km west of Tampa so he could avoid the brunt of the storm with Andy, his 16-year-old cat.
Two weeks ago, Wood defied evacuation orders and hunkered down in his house during Helene, a night he described as one of the most harrowing experiences of his life.
"We won't make the same mistake again," he said.
More than a dozen coastal counties issued mandatory evacuation orders, including Tampa's Hillsborough County. Pinellas County, which includes St Petersburg, ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones.
Motorists waited to fill their tanks in lines snaking around gas stations, only to find that some were out of fuel. By this morning, bumper-to-bumper traffic choked roads leading out of Tampa.
It took Mark Feinman, 38, and his family 13 hours to drive 805km from St Petersburg to Pensacola near the Florida-Alabama state line.
Mr Feinman, a musician, said some motorists were speeding through breakdown lanes and across grass medians to cut ahead, causing accidents. All gas stations for about a 200-mile stretch of Interstate 10 seemed to be out of gasoline.
"Luckily we have a hybrid, and we're able to switch between gas and the battery," he said. State police are providing escorts to fuel trucks that are headed out to replenish gas stations, Mr DeSantis said.
Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane after landfall in Florida, causing catastrophic damage and power outages expected to last days.
Milton is expected to grow in size before making landfall, putting hundreds of miles of coastline within the storm-surge danger zone, said Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the National Hurricane Center. The area placed under hurricane warnings is home to more than 9.3 million residents.
Governor Joaquin Diaz Mena of Yucatan state said much of the damage reported so far had been minor, though thousands of utility customers lost power.
Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US southeast in the wake of Hurricane Helene, which made landfall in Florida on 26 September, killed more than 200 people across six states and caused billions of dollars in damage.
