About 3.4mn customers in Florida were without power this morning after Hurricane Milton pummeled the state with heavy rainfall and strong winds.
Utility crews began the process of assessing and repairing the damage caused by the hurricane which tore down trees and downed power lines after slamming into Florida's west coast as a powerful Category 3 hurricane late Wednesday.
Florida Power & Light had about 1.2mn homes and businesses without electricity, Duke Energy reported about 875,000 outages, while about 592,000 customers of Tampa Electric were affected, according to independent tracker Poweroutage.us.
Milton, which has since weakened to a category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds of 85mph, is now moving off the east coast of Florida.
"On the forecast track, the center of Milton will continue to move away from Florida and pass to the north of the Bahamas today," according to the National Hurricane Center.
The risk of life-threatening storm surge remains on the eastern coast of Florida, while hurricane-force winds are expected to linger for a few more hours. Major flooding as a result of heavy rainfall also continues to pose a threat.
A recovery in road fuel supplies, which were strained by the pre-storm evacuation of hundreds of thousands of residents, will depend on the extent of power, roadway and port outages. The state has waived statutes regulating the sale, storage and distribution of liquid fuels.
