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The hurricane is headed for Tampa Bay, one of the most vulnerable areas of the country to flooding from storm surge.

Hurricane Milton has weakened slightly but remains a powerful Category 5 hurricane in the southwestern Gulf of Mexico, threatening to flood the west coast of Florida with historic storm surge.

Almost the entirety of the west coast of Florida was under a hurricane or tropical storm warning on Tuesday as the storm’s 270km/h (165mph) winds spun towards Tampa Bay, one of the largest urban areas of the state, sucking energy from the Gulf of Mexico’s warm waters.

A massive evacuation is already under way as residents of the Tampa Bay area head inland, seeking shelter after Milton rapidly strengthened from a tropical storm to Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale on Monday.

“This is the real deal here with Milton,” the mayor of Tampa, Jane Castor, told a news conference. “If you want to take on Mother Nature, she wins 100 percent of the time.”

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