TAMPA, Fla. — Residents in the Tampa Bay area have been asked to conserve their water usage immediately as Tampa Bay Water's regional water supply system is experiencing outages due to Hurricane Milton.
The regional supplier is running its critical operations on generator power but asked residents to limit water usage in order to help maintain water supply for Hillsborough, Pasco and Pinellas counties, and the cities of St. Peterburg and New Port Richie.
Work to restore lost power won't occur until impacts from Milton subside, and residents are asked to limit water usage until then, Tampa Bay Water said in a statement.
St. Petersburg is also trying to fix a major water main break that has impacted potable water services across the city. Because of that, they are shutting down drinking water services by midnight.
Hillsborough officials also sent out a news release on Thursday morning encouraging residents to reduce wastewater-producing activities such as washing clothes, showering and flushing toilets over the next few days.
More on Hurricane Milton
Hurricane Milton made landfall just after 8:30 p.m. on Florida's Gulf Coast near Siesta Key as a Category 3 storm. It has since weakened to a Category 1 hurricane as it continues to move across Florida.
According to the National Hurricane Center, it is continuing to bring devastating rains and damaging winds inland over parts of central Florida.
Milton came on the scene on Saturday as a tropical storm. Early Monday morning, Milton kicked off a rapid intensification starting as a Category 2 storm. It waffled between Category 4 and 5 strength on Tuesday before weakening to a Category 3 on Wednesday.
As of the 2 a.m. advisory, the storm is about 30 miles south of Orlando. It's moving east-northeast at 16 mph with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph.