<p class="ingestion featured-caption">Oscar Garcia with his family outside his house after getting hit by a reported tornado in Fort Myers, Florida.CHANDAN KHANNA/AFP/Getty Images</p><ul class="summary-list"><li><a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-landfall-florida-housing-market-insurance-fema-2024-10">Hurricane Milton</a> slammed into southwest Florida on Wednesday.</li><li>The storm caused widespread flooding and left over 3.3 million homes and businesses without power.</li></ul><p><a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-landfall-florida-housing-market-insurance-fema-2024-10">Hurricane Milton</a> ripped through southwest Florida on Wednesday, nearly two weeks after <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-helene-slams-florida-power-outages-flooding-2024-9">Hurricane Helene</a> hit Florida's Big Bend region.</p><p>Hurricane Milton made landfall near Sarasota County as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday evening. It was later downgraded to a Category 1.</p><p>Before Hurricane Milton even hit, tornadoes wrecked homes and killed four people. St. Petersburg police confirmed an additional two fatalities from the storm on Thursday, <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.nbcnews.com/weather/hurricanes/live-blog/hurricane-milton-live-updates-rcna174774">NBC News</a> reported.</p><p>Widespread flooding and winds of up to 120 mph left over 3.3 million homes and businesses without power as of Thursday morning, according to <a target="_blank" href="http://PowerOutage.us"><u>PowerOutage.us</u></a>.</p><p>Florida Gov. <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/ron-desantis-wife-casey-desantis-relationship-timeline">Ron DeSantis</a> said Hurricane Milton weakened before reaching the Florida coast, lessening storm surges that were predicted to be on par with Hurricane Helene.</p><p>"The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario," he said at a briefing on Thursday.</p><p>At a time when <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/2024-atlantic-hurricane-season-not-over-storms-predictions-2024-10">hurricanes are becoming more frequent</a> and <a target="_blank" class href="https://www.businessinsider.com/hurricane-milton-helene-economy-gdp-damage-cost-rebuilding-florida-climate-2024-10">more costly</a>, the cost of Hurricane Milton's destruction remains to be seen, but Hurricane Helene caused an estimated $34 billion worth of damage.</p><p>Photos show the aftermath of Hurricane Milton along Florida's coast.</p>