(WWJ) People are evacuating western Florida by the thousands as the powerful Hurricane Milton approaches — but many others are staying put.
Among those choosing to stick around is Novi, Michigan native Megan Engels, who’s riding out the storm out at a friend’s place in St. Petersburg with her boyfriend and their cat.
With storm surge warnings covering almost the entirety of Florida’s western coast , why not get out to be on the safe side?
“The amount of traffic that was on the roads at the time; we were keeping track of the gas shortages and the amount of traffic,” said Engels, who lives in the Tampa area, but grew up down the street from WWJ Newsradio 950’s Beth Fisher.
She explained, “We had a friend in downtown St. Pete who is in a brick building, lives on the fourth floor, in a non-evacuation zone, a non-flood zone, who said, ‘Hey, come stay with me. I think we’ll be good.”
Engles said they brought enough food and supplies for ten days, and they plan to hunker down.
Milton — the first major hurricane to directly hit the Tampa area in more than a century — is expected to make landfall sometime between 10 p.m. Wednesday and 2 a.m. Thursday as a Category 4 storm , bringing with it 155 mile-per-hour winds, up to 18 inches of rain, flash floods and storm surges up to 15 feet, according to the National Hurricane Center in Miami.