Hurricane Milton Rips Through Roof At Tropicana Field
On Wednesday night, the raging winds of Hurricane Milton ripped parts of the fabric of the roof off of Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg, Florida. The beams of the roof were still in place.
“First responders were staging with cots inside the stadium. There were no reported injuries,” ABC News reported.
Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key, just south of Sarasota, at 8:30 p.m. Wednesday night with winds at 120 mph; Tampa avoided a direct hit. By 10:30 p.m., winds from the hurricane had reached 91 mph in St. Petersburg, 105 mph at Egmont Channel, and 102 mph at Sarasota–Bradenton International Airport, WFLA reported.
By midnight, almost two million Floridians across the state had lost power, PowerOutage.com reported.
Tropicana Field, the home of the Tampa Devil Rays, is the only non-retractable domed stadium in Major League Baseball, the only year-round indoor venue in MLB.
“Earlier in the day, the National Weather Service in Miami observed at least four twisters, including a ‘multi-vortex tornado,” as meteorologists reported storm surge starting to arrive along the southwestern Florida coast,” CBSD News reported. “Tornado warnings were issued for multiple cities, adding to hurricane and storm surge warnings already in place for many of those same places.”
Although the hurricane had weakened from a category 5 storm to category 3 by the time it made landfall, scientist Jeff Masters told CBS News, ‘Some of the biggest catastrophes in hurricane history were from weakening storms. Katrina was weakening as it was approaching the shore and it caused $190 billion in damage. It was a Cat 3 at landfall and it was formerly a Cat 5. Well, here we have another former Cat 5 that’s going to be a Cat 3 at landfall, and the storm surge is baked in. It’s going to do unprecedented damage in this part of Florida.”