NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, located on the east coast of Florida, is in a “state of confinement” this Wednesday, a phase called ‘HURCON’, awaiting the imminent arrival of Hurricane Milton, which will make landfall tonight on the central west coast of this state, the agency reported.
“Kennedy has entered ‘HURCON I’ prior to the arrival of Hurricane Milton” and the center “is now closed” and its “access restricted to essential personnel,” the space agency said in a statement.
‘HURCON’, or hurricane condition, is a scale used by NASA and the US Armed Forces to indicate the status of emergency preparations when a hurricane approaches.
NASA and SpaceX postponed until further notice the launch of the Europa Clipper mission, which was scheduled to take off from Florida next Thursday, October 10 and has now been put on hold due to the impact of Hurricane Milton.
Hurricane Milton, which became a category 5, continued to lose intensity today and dropped from category 4 to 3, with maximum sustained winds of 195 kilometers, heading for the west coast of Florida, where up to seven tornadoes have already occurred. and one hundred tornado warnings.
Read: Hurricane Milton loses intensity and weakens to category 3
The system is located 100 kilometers west-southwest of Sarasota, on the west coast of Florida, and 275 kilometers southwest of Orlando, in the center of the state, and is moving northeast at 28 kilometers per hour and is expected your arrival tonight.
On the forecast track, the center will make landfall tonight somewhere along the central west coast of Florida, then cross the peninsula overnight before exiting into the Atlantic waters on Thursday morning.
Likewise, according to the specialized website PowerOutages, there are already nearly 200,000 homes and offices without electricity throughout the state.
More than 30,000 people are sheltering this Wednesday in the 149 shelters set up throughout Florida in the face of the imminent onslaught of Hurricane Milton, which is expected to make landfall at night on the central west coast of this US state and where it is already tornadoes and winds with tropical storm force are recorded.
In a press conference, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis specified this Wednesday that open shelters have the capacity to house more than 200,000 people and once again urged residents in mandatory evacuation zones to do so urgently.
Read: What you should know about the imminent arrival of Category 5 Hurricane Milton to Florida
Almost 7.3 million people reside in fifteen counties that have received mandatory evacuation orders, but not all are in a position to evacuate, as is the case with hospital patients or inmates in some prisons.
With information from EFE
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