Ron DeSantis: Hurricane Milton Going to ‘Pack a Major, Major Punch’; Still Time to Leave

There is still time to evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton’s arrival, Gov. Ron DeSantis said on Wednesday, urging those in evacuation zones to — in the very least — travel to a nearby shelter to hunker down for the storm.

Currently, 51 Florida counties are under a state of emergency.

“Hurricane Milton is still a major, very strong hurricane. It’s currently a Category Four hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 155 miles per hour. That is just a whisker shy of a Category Five,” DeSantis said at the presser ahead of the National Hurricane Center’s (NHC) 11 a.m. ET update.

“And while there is the hope that it will weaken more before landfall, there is high confidence that this hurricane is going to pack a major, major punch and do an awful lot of damage,” DeSantis warned, as the storm is slated to arrive as a Category 4, likely hitting south of Tampa. However, the damage is expected to be extensive, as the storm is expected to travel across the state and exit the east, still with hurricane status.

Videos across social media show the eerie clam before the storm, with vehicles going around neighborhoods urging residents to leave immediately.

“The storm is going to arrive within the next 24 hours, you still have time to evacuate if you are in an evacuation zone, particularly if you’re in Manatee, Sarasota, Charlotte, those areas,” DeSantis said, noting that individuals do not need to go far to leave:

I mean, the this track can bounce around. It’s not guaranteed it’s going to hit there. A lot of the solutions have it going there. You have time to do that now. Conditions aren’t going to be great today, I would say that the roads and the interstates, they are flowing. We’ve waived tolls. We’ve done all that so people can do but the best option would probably be just to evacuate within your own county to one of the shelters.

“All those counties have multiple shelters that are open. There’s a lot of space in those shelters right now, and certainly would be safe to do a very short evacuation tens of miles, rather than get on the interstate and go the roads are still open,” he said, warning that conditions will continue to deteriorate throughout the day.

WATCH the full presser below: