Good morning and welcome to way too early on this Thursday, October 10th. I'm Jonathan Lemire.

We appreciate you starting your day with us. We of course have breaking news. Hurricane Milton,

which made landfall last night as a Category 3 storm near Siesta Key, Florida, carving a path of

destruction after slamming along that state's West Coast

and bringing a life-threatening storm surge and flash flooding. Right now, Milton has been

downgraded to a Category 1 storm with maximum sustained winds at about 85 miles per hour.

The hurricane battered the state with a number of dangerous tornadoes that destroyed

an estimated 125 homes.

In St. Lucie County, a tornado proved deadly, killing at least two people in a mobile home

retirement community.

The sheriff there now says that his county is in 100% rescue mode.

Extreme winds also tore down traffic lights,

scattered debris across roadways,

and sent a crane, as you can see here, into a building.

Over three million homes and businesses are now in the dark after widespread

power outages were reported. Joining us now live from Orlando is NBC News correspondent Priscilla

Thompson. Priscilla, good morning. Could you give us the very latest as to the conditions there

and what the latest is on the ground.

Yeah, Jonathan, so let me tell you a little bit about what we're seeing here.

We are still getting some wind.

You can see some of these trees blowing, but at this point, the storm is more than 30 miles past us,

and so we're not getting those super high winds that we saw overnight with Daytona Beach

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