Powerful cyclone slams into coast, bringing deadly storm surge to Sarasota, Tampa, St Petersburg and Fort Myers

• Hurricane Milton – latest updates

A weakening but still tremendously powerful Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida’s west coast on Wednesday night as a category 3, pushing ahead of it a massive and potentially deadly wall of water from the Gulf of Mexico, as well as “catastrophic” winds likely to cause significant property damage.

The cyclone, described earlier in the day by Joe Biden as “the storm of the century”, made landfall at near Sarasota, Florida, just after 8:30pm ET, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami said. The storm was bringing deadly storm surge to much of Florida’s Gulf coast, including densely populated areas such as Tampa, St Petersburg, Sarasota and Fort Myers.