Hurricane Milton marched across central Florida on Thursday after making landfall on the state's west coast hours earlier, whipping up deadly tornadoes, destroying homes and knocking out power to nearly 2 million customers.

Hurricane Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm at about 8:30 p.m. Wednesday near Siesta Key in Sarasota County, Florida the National Hurricane Center said.  Milton was a Category 5 hurricane late Tuesday but was downgraded to a Category 3 Wednesday afternoon after spending most of the day as a Category 4.

The hurricane brought life-threatening storm surge and heavy rain to a region that was pummeled by Helene less than two weeks ago.