Tiger Woods ‘flees’ Florida amid Hurricane Milton chaos after ‘threat to life’ warning

Tiger Woods’ aircraft took off from Florida just before the state was hit by the brunt of Hurricane Milton, with the golf superstar heading to Jackson, Mississippi.

Woods’ private jet was spotted departing Florida on Wednesday morning by radaratlas2 on X and making its way to Jackson, the site of last week’s Sanderson Farms Championship where Kevin Yu emerged victorious.

Woods did not participate in the tournament as he had previously announced that he does not anticipate returning to competitive play until November. After a challenging 2024, and still recovering from a 2021 car accident that required major surgery, Woods will not compete until his Hero World Challenge event in the Bahamas at the end of November.

In 2024, Woods failed to make the cut at both the PGA Championship and the U. S. Open, and also missed out on the weekend at The Open. He is also set to team up with his teenage son, Charlie, in December for the PNC Challenge in Florida.

“I’m going to just keep getting physically better and keep working on it,” Woods recently stated. The 15-time major champion flew out of Florida ahead of the peak of Hurricane Milton, which officials were calling the “storm of the century”, with expected sustained winds of nearly 241km/h.

As of Tuesday afternoon, Milton was classified as a Category 5 hurricane, but it was later downgraded to a Category 3. Despite the downgrade, officials continued to warn that the hurricane posed a significant threat to life.

President Joe Biden on Wednesday expressed the severity of the situation, saying: “Milton is a Category 3 with wind speeds up to 120 miles per hour,” and warning that “But no one should be confused. It’s still expected to be one of the most and worst destructive hurricanes to hit Florida in over a century.”

The storm dramatically weakened overnight, as Milton downgraded from a fearsome Category 5 to a Category 1, while Florida weathered winds of 193km/h, leaving a trail of darkness with more than 1.5 million homes and businesses without electricity, reported The US National Hurricane Center.

In its early morning update, the NHC stated: “There is a danger of life-threatening storm surge along the coast from east-central Florida northward to southern Georgia, where a Storm Surge Warning remains in effect,” and detailed: “Damaging hurricane-force winds, especially in gusts, will continue for a few more hours in east-central and northeastern Florida.”

Officials have issued an urgent plea for safety, advising residents “to remain in an interior room and away from windows,” and cautioning that “Heavy rainfall across the central to northern Florida Peninsula through this morning continues to bring the risk of considerable flash and urban flooding.”