As of early Wednesday, Hurricane Milton was barreling across the Gulf of Mexico as what the National Hurricane Center is calling a "catastrophic" Category 5 storm, on track to make landfall along Florida's central west coast, including the Tampa area, late Wednesday or early Thursday.

Steady rain fell and winds began to gust in the Tampa Bay area Wednesday morning as a mighty Hurricane Milton churned toward a potentially catastrophic collision with the west coast of Florida, where some residents insisted they would stay even after millions were ordered to evacuate.