Hurricane Milton strengthened again to Category 5 on Tuesday afternoon after it briefly weakened to Category 4 on Monday night.
With maximum sustained winds of 165 miles per hour Tuesday afternoon, the hurricane will prove to be the worst storm system to hit the U.S. state of Florida in over 100 years.
Sustained wind gusts topped 200 miles per hour on Monday from Hurricane Milton, already being called for the new designation of Category 6.
Over five million residents in Florida's western coast have been urged to evacuate ahead of the landfall of the hurricane on Wednesday night or early Thursday.
At least 20 Florida counties have issued mandatory and voluntary evacuation orders; officials utter out dire warnings to those under evacuation orders.
"If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas… you're gonna die," warned Jane Castor, mayor of Tampa.
There will not be enough time left on Wednesday to evacuate and Milton is likely to stay a hurricane when it crosses the Florida Peninsula with life-threatening winds, says the most recent update of the U.S. National Hurricane Center.
Local highways were jammed Monday as people attempted to flee the area where the storm may make landfall.
Over the weekend, President Joe Biden approved a declaration of emergency in Florida as the state is still trying to recover from the impacts of Hurricane Helene.
Biden Delays Foreign Trip as Hurricane Milton Approaches Florida
President Joe Biden will postpone a trip abroad this week as Hurricane Milton may go ashore in Florida on Wednesday, according to reports.
Biden was scheduled to leave for Berlin on Thursday. Then he was to head to Angola, southern Africa and return home on Oct.15. That would have marked the first time that Biden would travel to the African continent as president.
"GIVEN THE forecast track and intensity of Hurricane Milton, President Biden is cancelling his planned trip to Germany and Angola next week to oversee preparations for and the response to Hurricane Milton, in addition to the ongoing response to the impacts of Hurricane Helene across the Southeast," White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre said in a statement.
NBC News first reported the trip was delayed on Tuesday, citing two sources familiar with the planning.
Speaking with reporters, Biden said he would indeed visit the affected areas before his term was over.
Meteorologists and government officials for weeks have been warning residents of the impacts of Milton and have been urging Florida residents who live in areas where the impact will be felt to evacuate.
Former President Donald Trump has been vocal in his criticism of Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris for not immediately taking the ground to assess damage from Hurricane Helene, when, in fact, they clearly stated they didn't want it to be a disruption. He also came to North Carolina and Georgia several days after the storm hit the United States.
Trump also falsely claimed that the administration was incommunicado about Helene, or, in his words, "kept in a closet." He's also falsely claimed that FEMA had no money because it was being used on "illegal migrants." As NBC News reported last week, the former president appears to have been conflating two separate FEMA funds, and there's no evidence the disaster relief funds were used for anything else.
Frankly ridiculous and just plain false," FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell said of the claims by President Donald Trump on ABC's "This Week" Sunday. The president and vice president laid out the steps the administration has been taking to ease the on-the-ground recovery efforts during their visits to hurricane-ravaged areas, such as deploying Defense Department troops to help local responders.
