marched across central Florida on Thursday after making landfall on the state’s west coast hours earlier, whipping up deadly tornadoes, destroying homes and knocking out power to nearly 2 million customers.
A flash flood emergency was in effect for the Tampa Bay area including the cities of Tampa, St. Petersburg and Clearwater, the hurricane center said, with St. Petersburg already receiving 16.6 inches of rain on Wednesday. “At this point, it’s too dangerous to evacuate safely, so you have to shelter in place and just hunker down,” DeSantis said upon announcing the landfall.
The storm was expected to cross the Florida peninsula overnight and emerge into the Atlantic, still with hurricane force, on Thursday. Much of the southern US experienced the deadly force of Hurricane Helene as it cut a swath of devastation through Florida and several other states. Both storms are expected to cause billions of dollars in damage.While human evacuees jammed the highways and created gasoline shortages, animals including African elephants, Caribbean flamingos and pygmy hippos were riding out the storm at Tampa’s zoo.