Hurricane Milton crashes into Florida with 120mph winds - destroying homes and leaving millions without power

Hurricane Milton crashed into Florida with winds of 120mph before battering coastal areas and producing at least 27 tornadoes across the state.

The Category 3 storm roared ashore near Siesta Key in Sarasota County around 8.30pm local time on Wednesday, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said.

However, Milton's winds weakened to 90mph overnight, making it a lower Category 1 storm, the NHC added.

About 125 homes were destroyed before the hurricane even made landfall, many of them mobile homes in communities for senior citizens, Kevin Guthrie, the director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management, said.

The hurricane also knocked out power for more than three million homes and businesses in the state on Wednesday night, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports. The highest number of outages were in Sarasota County and neighbouring Manatee County.

Tampa Bay, where nearly everybody on the west coast of Florida lives, has avoided a direct hit but a storm surge is expected to crash into the densely populated cities of Tampa and St Petersburg in the area.

A storm surge is also expected to hit the coastal cities of Sarasota and Fort Myers further south.

The hurricane shredded the fabric roof of the Tropicana Field stadium, home of the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team, in St Petersburg.

Meanwhile, a crane collapsed into a building in the city which has recorded more than 16 inches of rain.

Officials in St Petersburg said: "No injuries have been reported in either incident at this time."

It comes as people in the city have been unable to get water from their household taps because a water main break led the city to shut down service.

Heavy rains were also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday.

At the time of landfall, nearly 100,000 people were in evacuation centres across Florida, Sky News' US partner network NBC reported, citing the Florida Division of Emergency Management.

Speaking from the White House earlier on Wednesday, President Joe Biden said Milton is expected to be "one of the most destructive hurricanes in Florida in over a century".

He said it carries "incredible destructiveness and can wipe out communities and cause loss of life" while urging everyone in its path to listen to the advice of local officials.

Milton has also caused at least 27 tornadoes to rip through Florida so far, the National Weather Service (NWS) in the US said.

NWS officials said it was still working to confirm all the reports due to the treacherous conditions in the state.

Meteorology professor Victor Gensini said the ferocity of the tornadoes seen during Hurricane Milton's approach was "definitely out of the ordinary".

He said: "Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they're usually weak... There's an incredible amount of swirling going on."

At least two people were confirmed to have been killed in a tornado in St Lucie County - a southeastern region in Fort Pierce, NBC reported.

A spokesperson for the St Lucie Fire District confirmed the deaths and that multiple other people were taken to hospitals.

'Daylight will reveal the full impact'

Reporting from Tampa, as the storm made landfall 60 miles away, Sky News US correspondent James Matthews said you could feel its "devastating power".

"You can hear it in the roar, and sense it. You can feel it in the wind," he said.

"They have called this a historic hurricane. The strongest to hit this part of Florida for more than 100 years.

"Reduced from a Category 5 to a Category 3 storm by the time it hit, but that doesn't mean that it is not extremely powerful, extremely dangerous, and will have, one imagines, a devastating impact.

"This is all happening in the hours of darkness, daylight will reveal the full impact of Hurricane Milton."

Milton slammed into a Florida region still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which caused heavy damage to beach communities with storm surge and killed a dozen people in seaside Pinellas County alone.

On Wednesday, officials issued last ditch attempts urging the near two million people under evacuation orders to flee or face slim chances of survival.

Cathie Perkins, emergency management director in Pinellas County, said: "Those of you who were punched during Hurricane Helene, this is going to be a knockout. You need to get out, and you need to get out now."

While Paul Womble, Polk County emergency management director, said: "Unless you really have a good reason to leave at this point, we suggest you just hunker down."

A stream of vehicles was pictured headed north on Interstate 75, the main road on the west side of the peninsula, as residents followed evacuation orders.

Traffic also clogged up the southbound lanes of the road for miles as others headed for the relative safety of Fort Lauderdale and Miami on the other side of the state.

Meanwhile, animals at Tampa's zoo took shelter in hurricane-hardened buildings.

Once past Florida, Milton should weaken over the west of the Atlantic Ocean, possibly dropping below hurricane strength on Thursday night, but storm-surges will still pose a threat to the state's Atlantic coast.

-SKY NEWS