Florida could be facing one of the worst hurricane catastrophes of all time as Hurricane Milton continues to build to one of the most powerful storms ever to make landfall on the Gulf Coast.

“Unless we get extremely lucky, Milton will be one of the biggest hurricane disasters in history,” leading Fox Weather hurricane meteorologist Bryan Norcross predicted Monday, shortly after the hurricane was upgraded to a Category 5 storm with winds of 180 mph.

Norcross said it is too early to call where the storm will hit when it makes landfall Wednesday, but that if it follows the current trajectory and strikes Tampa Bay directly the city “will go underwater.”

“The Gulf water will be pushed up to 12 feet above normal high tide along the entire densely populated west coast of Florida near and south of where Milton’s center comes ashore,” Norcross said on Fox Weather.

A later forecast from the National Hurricane Center preducted storm surge for Tampa Bay could hit up to 15 feet. 

Milton is currently expected to be the first time Tampa Bay has been directly hit by a hurricane in over 100 years – possibly spelling disaster for the low-lying city. The last time it was struck in 1921 the storm surge was lower than current predictions, and the city was still flooded through.

Florida Senator Marco Rubio echoed Norcross’s warnings, saying Milton’s current forecasts matched “worst case” scenarios he’d previously asked experts to compile.

“Several years ago I asked [the National Hurricane Center] to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” Rubio tweeted Monday.

“What they showed me back then is almost identical to the Milton forecast now.”

More than 15 million Floridians were under threat from the storm, which has been “explosively” intensifying as it approaches Florida.

The last time a Category 5 storm of such magnitude hit the region was in 2019 with Hurricane Dorian, which formed in the Bahamas and skirted Florida’s east coast.

But Milton has formed in the Gulf of Mexico, and is expected to slam into Florida head-on and bring the worst storm surges between the Anclote River, north of Clearwater, and Englewood, north of Fort Myers.

“It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,” MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel, who has studied hurricanes for 40 years, said. “I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.”

Authorities once again warned people who refused to leave their homes in the evacuation zone to write their names and personal information on their arms in permanent marker so that their bodies could be identified. 

Milton started Monday as an alarming Category 2 hurricane — before being upgraded three times in just over two hours into a major Category 5 storm, according to the National Hurricane Center.

With still two days before the predicted landfall, the National Hurricane Center is warning that Milton is still forecast to “undergo rapid intensification” before then.

Current models predict the Florida coastline will slow the storm down to a high Category 3 or 4 storm by the time it makes landfall – but its projected path across the narrow peninsula means there is unlikely going to be enough land to slow it down to a tropical storm, and it will remain a full hurricane as it blows across the entire state.

“I’m just gonna distill it down and put it in some plainspeak — everybody’s just got to get out,” warned Sheriff Bob Gualtieri of Pinellas County, which includes Clearwater and St. Petersburg.

“This is going to be bad. That’s all you need to know,” he said of warnings that the storm surge could top 8 feet along his county’s coastal regions.

“There’s going to reach a point where you are on your own, because we are not going to get our people killed because you don’t want to listen to what we’re saying.”

Kevin Guthrie, director of Florida’s emergency management division, urged residents to be prepared for the “largest evacuation that we have seen most likely since 2017 Hurricane Irma,” when 7 million Floridians were ordered to evacuate. 

“I highly encourage you to evacuate,” Guthrie said during a press conference

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also said that while it remains to be seen where Milton will strike, it’s clear the state is going to be hit hard.

“You have time to prepare … be sure your hurricane preparedness plan is in place,” DeSantis said Sunday.

“If you’re on that west coast of Florida, barrier islands, just assume you’ll be asked to leave.”

The governor placed 51 of the state’s counties under emergency orders Sunday and said residents should be prepared for widespread outages and disruption. 

Even before Milton was upgraded Monday, it posed “an increasing risk of life-threatening storm surge from Milton for portions of the west coast of the Florida Peninsula beginning Tuesday night or early Wednesday,” the hurricane center had warned.

“Residents should follow any advice given by local officials and evacuate if told to do so,” the federal agency warned.

The storm is expected to remain at its current strength for the next few days, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said.

The Tampa Bay area was still reeling from the effects of Helene, which left extensive damage and killed at least 230 people across six states. 

Helene was a Category 4 storm when it made landfall in Florida on Sept. 26, before soon being downgraded — but devastating some areas to the point that they are now unrecognizable.

While Florida is expected to bear the full brunt of Milton, the storm is predicted to blow straight through to the Atlantic Ocean – meaning the rest of the American south will be spared.

The center of the storm was about 675 miles southwest of Tampa by Monday evening. It was moving east-southeast at 10 mph, according to the hurricane center.   

With Post wires.