TAMPA, United States (AFP)— Florida residents fled —or defied warnings and tried to take shelter— Wednesday in the final hours before Hurricane Milton, a lethal Category 4 storm, roars out of the ocean and tears across the state.

Milton was downgraded by the US weather service from top-of-the-scale Category 5 to a 4 early in the day. However, that will make little difference to the ferocity of the wind and height of tidal surges inundating the heavily populated and low-lying coast.

“It’s a matter of life and death,” President Joe Biden said Tuesday. “Evacuate now, now, now.”

Making matters worse, Milton comes on the heels of Hurricane Helene, which flooded the same west parts of Florida before wreaking havoc across remote areas of North Carolina and further inland.

“The last time, the water was up to my hip. So I think this time… I’m going to go ahead, grab my family and go,” said Emmanuel Parks, a 36-year-old pastor.

But time to flee was running out.

By Wednesday morning, Milton was located 250 miles (400 km) southwest of Tampa, generating maximum sustained winds of 155 mph (249 kph), according to the National Hurricane Center (NHC).

“Winds will begin to increase along the west coast of Florida by this afternoon,” the NHC said. “Preparations, including evacuation if told to do so, should be rushed.”

Airlines put on extra flights out of Tampa, Orlando, Fort Myers and Sarasota, as highways clogged up with escaping traffic and gas stations sold out of fuel.

Not all Floridians, who have seen many hurricanes come and go, were expected to obey the evacuation orders, however.

John Gomez, 75, travelled all the way from Chicago to try to save his Florida home.

“I think it’s better to be here in case something happens,” Gomez said.

Tampa city Mayor Jane Castor’s warning was brutally stark.

“If you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you are going to die,” she said on CNN.

Biden postponed a major trip to Germany and Angola to oversee the federal response.

With the presidential election just weeks away, Donald Trump and some of his far-right Republican allies have turned the twin disasters of hurricanes Helene and Milton into a political football.

Conspiracy theories about government involvement in the weather and disinformation about supposed failure by Democratic candidate Kamala Harris and the rest of the Biden administration to respond have spread rapidly.

This prompted one Republican member of Congress from Florida, Carlos Gimenez, to issue a statement Wednesday that “Humans cannot create or control hurricanes. Anyone who thinks they can, needs to have their head examined.”

Trump took a new shot Wednesday, posting on social media that the response in North Carolina was “totally and incompetently managed by Harris/Biden.”

Biden slammed Trump’s politicisation of the natural disasters as “un-American.”

Harris attacked Trump late Tuesday, asking: “Have you no empathy, man, for the suffering of other people?”

Scientists say global warming has a role in intense storms as warmer ocean surfaces release more water vapor, providing additional energy for storms, which exacerbates their winds.

A report by the World Weather Attribution group published Wednesday said Hurricane Helene’s torrential rain and powerful winds were made about 10 per cent more intense due to climate change.

Storms of Helene’s magnitude were formerly anticipated once every 130 years, but now the probability is closer to once every 53 years, on average.

On the ground, communities hit by deadly Hurricane Helene have rushed to remove debris that could become dangerous projectiles as Milton approaches.

Across the southeastern United States, emergency workers are still struggling to provide relief after Helene, which killed at least 230 people.