Hurricane Milton live tracker: landfall reaches Florida [Video]

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is CTVNews.ca’s Hurricane Milton coverage for Wednesday, Oct. 9. For live updates on Thursday, click here. 

Hurricane Milton has made landfall in Florida Wednesday night.

Follow along for live updates throughout the day.

10:40 p.m. EDT: More than 1.6 million Florida customers without power

More than 1.6 million power customers in Florida were left in the dark Wednesday night as Hurricane Milton battered the state with tornadoes, flooding and strong winds.

Counties along the western coast of the peninsula were hardest hit, particularly in the central portion of the state. Nearly all of the roughly 9,600 Peace River Electric Coop customers in Hardee County were without power shortly after 10 p.m., according to the website PowerOutage.us.

Outage numbers were climbing throughout the evening but still have not yet reached the totals seen when Hurricane Ian hit Florida in 2022. That storm affected more than 4.45 million power customers over several days in four states, according to PowerOutage.us, impacting …