TAMPA, Fla. >> Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday along Florida’s Gulf Coast as a Category 3 storm, bringing powerful winds, deadly storm surge and potential flooding to much of the state. Milton drew fuel from exceedingly warm Gulf of Mexico waters, twice reaching Category 5 status.

The cyclone had maximum sustained winds of 120 mph (205 kph) as it roared ashore near Siesta Key in Sarasota County, the Miami-based National Hurricane Center 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.

Heavy rains were also likely to cause flooding inland along rivers and lakes as Milton traverses the Florida peninsula as a hurricane, eventually to emerge in the Atlantic Ocean on Thursday.Milton slammed into a Florida region still reeling from Hurricane Helene, which caused heavy damage to beach communities with storm surge and killed a dozen people in seaside Pinellas County alone.

Earlier, officials issued dire warnings to flee or face grim odds of survival.

“This is it, folks,” said Cathie Perkins, emergency management director in Pinellas County, which sits on the peninsula that forms Tampa Bay. “Those of you who were punched during Hurricane Helene, this is going to be a knockout. You need to get out, and you need to get out now.”

By late afternoon, some officials said the time had passed for such efforts. By the evening, some counties announced they has suspended emergency services.

“Unless you really have a good reason to leave at this point, we suggest you just hunker down,” Polk County Emergency Management Director Paul Womble said in a public update.

Multiple tornadoes spawned by the hurricane tore across Florida, the twisters acting as a dangerous harbingers of Milton’s approach. Videos posted to social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighborhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.

Milton, which has fluctuated in intensity as it approached Florida, was a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday evening. It was expected to remain a hurricane after hitting land and plowing across the state, including the heavily populated Orlando area, through Thursday.

Tampa Bay, near the top of a long stretch of coastline that could be in the bull’s-eye, has not taken a direct hit from a major hurricane in more than a century.

“That doesn’t mean that it couldn’t happen,” said Luisa Meshekoff, who nevertheless was staying put with her partner and eight cats in their home, a brick warehouse in a mandatory evacuation zone in Tampa’s Channel District. The couple considered leaving but felt bringing the cats to a shelter wasn’t an option, and they worried that getting stuck on the roads could be dangerous.

“I think if you have water and batteries, everything’s OK,” Meshekoff said. “I could be singing a different tune by 2 in the morning.”

Milton threatened communities still reeling two weeks after Hurricane Helene flooded streets and homes in western Florida and left at least 230 people dead across the South. In many places along the coast, municipalities raced to collect and dispose of debris before Milton’s winds and storm surge could toss it around and compound any damage.

With the storm weaker but growing in size, the surge was projected to reach as high as 9 feet (2.7 meters) in Tampa Bay.

Jackie Curnick said she wrestled with her decision to stay and hunker down at home in Sarasota. But with a 2-year-old son and a baby girl due Oct. 29, Curnick and her husband thought it was for the best.

Curnick said they started packing Monday to evacuate, but they couldn’t find any available hotel rooms, and the few they came by were too expensive.

She said there were too many unanswered questions if they got in the car and left: Where to sleep, if they’d be able to fill up their gas tank, and if they could even find a safe route out of the state.

“The thing is it’s so difficult to evacuate in a peninsula,” she said. “In most other states, you can go in any direction to get out. In Florida there are only so many roads that take you north or south.