Just caught part of interview on Fox Weather with sheriff of St. Lucie: 17 tornadoes, “hundreds” of homes wrecked.
I just saw some video footage, on my local news here in Chicago, of Tropicana Field, the domed stadium in St. Petersburg, where the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team plays. It’s a fabric roof, and large sections of it have torn away.
And now half the roof of Tropicana Field’s been ripped off. “We know that first responders were staging with cots inside the stadium. There were no reported injuries.”
ETA: Just spotted on CNN online:
Winds are so strong in Tampa right now water is being forced through a building’s wall
From CNN’s Paul P. Murphy
Hurricane force winds roaring through the Tampa Bay area are gusting with such force it’s pushing water through one building’s wall.
Also from CNN:
Sheriff Keith Pearson told the outlet multiple people were killed at Spanish Lakes Country Club, but the exact details are unclear.
@Moriarty the NY Times has a couple of video clips, a few seconds long, of an evacuation shelter in New Port Richey. One looks like a high school gym with at least 100 people on sleeping bags, cots, air mattresses, and another is a hallway with dozens of pets in crates.
And this map shows over a million without power
Interactive Map: Florida power outages by county (wpbf.com)
Here is another map: it shows 2 million out of 11.5 million Florida customers without power:
On my first read, I thought you wrote “doomed stadium”. Not that that seems wrong…
Looks like Tampa escaped a worst case scenario. It’s very bad but if the storm tracked a little further north, it would have been catastrophic. The region between Sarasota and Venice got hit hard, though. I hope people came to their senses and got out while they still could. We’ll see how it looks in the morning.
I came through it unscathed. I didn’t even lose power.
Still some lingering wind here but nothing broken so far. The only casualty was my sleep from worrying about tornadoes. Ironically, my apartment’s streets were flooded an inch or so high well before the actual storm hit, but now they are clear. I guess the wind pushed the water away.
We continued to get almost nothing here in west central Broward. Our tropical storm warning has been dropped. We still have a wind advisory for most of the day.
I see 3.3 million customers in the state are listed as having no power. I’m just starting to see the destruction elsewhere. I did see two different animal rescues in the general area post that they took massive damage, although happily all the animals are safe.
I have a few co-workers in heavily effected areas. I’m hopeful to hear from them today.
Our power is out, we’re otherwise fine.
Apparently, the southern part of Florida got nothing because the counterclockwise rotation of the storm drew in warm, dry air from the south. The path of the hurricane and north of the hurricane, however. got pasted. One community got over 16 inches of rain.
So where will the Rays play next year? I rather doubt they can rebuild the dome by then- they certainly can’t play in open air.
I spoke to soon. Power just dropped.
Everyone I have checking in from there seems to have rode it fine, save for power outages and some minor damage. Still, they’re just now scoping things out around them.
For the last couple hurricanes, I’ve seen footage on the news of people filling sandbags, presumably to stack around their dwellings to keep water out. Does that really do any good? In all that wind and rain, seems like the water is going to get into everything, no matter how many sandbags are in the way.
In December of 2010, the fabric roof of the Metrodome In Minneapolis tore open and collapsed due to heavy snow. They were able to complete a full replacement of the roof by August 1st of 2011.
Granted, there’s less time between now and the start of next year’s baseball season (less than six months); if roof repairs aren’t done by then, I’d suspect that they’ll play home games at either another MLB stadium in the region (e.g., Miami or Atlanta), or at a minor league or college stadium. The latter solution would have lower capacity, but it’s what the A’s will be doing next season (they’re leaving Oakland, but their new home in Vegas won’t be ready for several years).
What happened last night?
I anxiously turned on Today show at 8:10 and they haven’t mentioned Milton.
CNN says power is out and a sports stadium lost a roof.
WTH? They scare the hell out of everybody predicting the destruction of Miami.
I guess Milton wasn’t nearly as bad as predicted?
I’m glad tens of thousands aren’t dead.
Ok, finally at 9AM the third hour of Today show they are opening with storm news.
Not sure what you’re expecting from a fluffy morning show like “Today”
Check the real news. It’s near constant Milton coverage.
Tropicana Field has a fabric roof. It got ripped away in the heavy winds.
Who is “they” here? No government officials or meteorologists were predicting the destruction of Miami. Or any serious impacts to the southern tip of Florida at all, for that matter.
They were predicting serious damage to the west coast of Florida, which has largely borne out. How much damage is not yet clear as the storm is still going on and the people in the affected areas obviously have some important things on their minds at the moment.
Hurricanes rarely cause large numbers of direct deaths. Hundreds would still be a lot. And the death toll in the days ahead will rise as flooding and issues resulting from the loss of power will have their effect. The vast amount of damage and years of rebuilding for tens or hundreds of thousands of people is more than bad enough.
Here. You have a bit of catching up to do: