Hurricane Milton Flings Boats Inland, Aggressive Alligators Onto Flooded Streets

Hurricane Milton’s devastation on Florida’s gulf coast left residents with some unique challenges on Thursday, like dodging grounded boats on residential streets and aggressive alligators lurking in flood waters.

The latter instance was captured in a chilling video shared online, which showed an alligator lunge at a Floridian’s car in North Fort Myers, just south of where Milton made landfall as a Category 3 storm on Wednesday.

That footage shows the massive gator miss its prey but still bite the vehicle’s tire, showcasing its deadly, uber-sharp teeth. The animal is then seen retreating to the dark, flooded street he appeared from.

While it was likely the most dramatic wildlife encounter captured on camera amid the storm, other Floridians shared images of unwelcome reptiles turning up in unusual places—like an alligator on the back porch of a home in Lakeland and inside a flooded apartment in Orlando.

Milton appears to have not been as catastrophic as initially feared, thanks partially to favorable directions of winds that limited storm surge in Tampa Bay, but was still the region’s most devastating cyclone in decades and decimated parts of nearby Sarasota County where it made landfall.

The storm ripped the roof off the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium, which was supposed to be a staging area for thousands of National Guardsman who had to be evacuated. Storm surge pushed boats miles ashore, cranes toppled over, fallen oak trees and billboards-gone-airborne each flattened portions of homes, and more than two million had their power knocked out.

The true damage of Milton remains largely unknown as the status of Florida’s barrier islands, home to the state’s most-famous beaches like Clearwater and Treasure Island, is unclear. Their coastal location—surrounded by water on all sides—meant they were most-susceptible to storm surge and the full wrath of Milton’s winds. Bridges connecting those barrier islands to the mainland remained closed Thursday morning, and the vast majority of their residents got out of dodge ahead of Milton’s landfall.

Milton’s destruction wasn’t limited to coastal areas. Even in Orlando, in the state’s center, the Orange County Sheriff’s Office shared footage of its officers wading in chest-deep floodwaters to conduct rescues in a mobile home park. In inland Hillsborough County, its sheriff, Chad Chronister, rescued a 14-year-old boy stranded alone in floodwaters, clinging to debris.

A hard casualty count is yet to be released by officials, but police in South Florida confirmed that there were “fatalities” after a Milton-induced tornado ripped through an elderly housing community. Other twisters destroyed homes and toppled cars elsewhere in Florida, including one that touched down less than 15 miles from Mar-a-Lago.