Monster hurricane Milton threatens battered Florida

The category 5 Hurricane Milton was expected to grow bigger on Tuesday as it threatened Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula on its way to Florida in the US, where more than a million people were ordered to evacuate from its path.

The densely populated west coast of Florida, reeling from devastating Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago, braced for landfall on Wednesday.

The US national hurricane centre projected the storm was likely to hit near the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, home to more than 3-million people and where some evacuees rushed to dispose of mounds of debris left behind by Helene on their way out of town.

With maximum sustained winds of 270km/h, Milton was categorised as the strongest level storm on the five-step Saffir-Simpson scale.

Wind speeds could decrease to 233km/h by the time it approaches Florida, according to the hurricane centre. That would be a category 4 storm, meaning catastrophic damage will occur, including power outages expected to last days.

Fed by warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic Ocean, the hurricane centre said, as it surged from a tropical storm to a category 5 hurricane in less than 24-hours.

Its path from west to east was also unusual as Gulf hurricanes typically form in the Caribbean Sea and make landfall after traveling west and turning north.

"It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward and make landfall on the western coast of Florida," said Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University.

"This has big implications since the track of the storm plays a role in determining where the storm surge will be the largest."

The hurricane center forecast storm surges of 3m to 4.5m along a stretch of coastline north and south of Tampa Bay.

Jamie Rhome, deputy director of the centre, said Milton was expected to grow in size before making landfall on Wednesday, putting hundreds of kilometres of coastline within the storm surge danger zone.

Milton was likely to remain a hurricane for its entire journey across the Florida peninsula, Rhome told a Monday news briefing.

On Monday night the eye of the storm was 60 north-northwest of Progreso, a Mexican port near the Yucatan state capital of Merida, and 1,015km southwest of Tampa, moving east at 15km/h. 

Milton was expected to pound the northern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula in the early hours on Tuesday.

The area is home to the picturesque colonial-era city of Merida, population 1.2-million, several Maya ruins popular with tourists and the port of Progreso.

In Florida, counties along the western coast ordered people in low-lying areas to take shelter on higher ground.

Pinellas County, which includes St Petersburg, said it ordered the evacuation of more than 500,000 people. Lee County said 416,000 people lived in its mandatory evacuation zones. At least six other coastal counties ordered evacuations, including Hillsborough County, which includes the city of Tampa.

With one final day for people to evacuate on Tuesday, local officials raised concerns about traffic jams and long lines at fuel stations.

Relief efforts remain ongoing throughout much of the US southeast in the wake of Helene, a category 4 hurricane that made landfall in Florida on September 26, killed more than 200 people and caused billions of dollars in damage across six states.

Reuters