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DISCUSSION AND OUTLOOK
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At 800 PM EDT (0000 UTC), the center of Hurricane Milton was located
near latitude 27.2 North, longitude 82.8 West.  Milton is moving
toward the east-northeast near 15 mph (24 km/h), and this general 
motion is expected to continue through Thursday, followed by a turn 
toward the east on Friday.  On the forecast track, the center of 
Milton will make landfall just south of the Tampa Bay region 
within the next hour or two, and then move across the central part 
of the Florida peninsula overnight, and emerge off the east coast of 
Florida on Thursday.

Maximum sustained winds are near 120 mph (195 km/h) with higher
gusts.  Milton is a category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson
Hurricane Wind Scale.  Little change in strength is likely 
until landfall, and Milton is expected to remain a hurricane 
while it moves across central Florida through Thursday.  The system 
is forecast to weaken over the western Atlantic and become 
extratropical by Thursday night.

As far as I can tell NOAA is giving <80% probability there are hurricane force (category 1+) winds when it makes landfall. Am misunderstanding something about how this forecast works?

HURRICANE MILTON

@Fay42 A lot of that visualization reflects uncertainty in the path rather than the strength at landfall. A given area could have a low chance of hurricane-force winds because it's unlikely to pass directly over that area even if the storm itself is a hurricane.

@Sketchy oh huh! That's a remarkably satisfying answer.

The NHC is scared to publicly forecast significant weakening, because then on the off chance it doesn’t happen they get smeared as murderers. The storm has been falling apart on satellite imagery for hours now.

@DanielGlasscock I think they are rightly concerned about that, yeah. Maybe they want to wait as long as possible to declare these changes, to err on the side of caution.

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Looks like it's going to be right in between 3 and 4 - I've seen both forecasted several times