Over 160,000 US customers without power as Hurricane Milton approaches

(Reuters) - More than 160,000 homes and businesses in Georgia, the Carolinas, Texas and California were without power on Wednesday as Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall on Florida's Gulf Coast late Wednesday, according to PowerOutage.us.

The utility with the most outages was U.S. energy company Duke Energy, a major supplier in the Carolinas, with about 63,108 customers still out in North Carolina, according to PowerOutage.us.

The Category 5 hurricane became the third-fastest intensifying storm on record in the Atlantic, growing from a Category 1 to a Category 5 in less than 24 hours. It could be potentially one of the most destructive ever to hit the region, which is still recovering from devastation caused by Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.

"Sadly, Helene's devastation is unlike anything we've ever experienced in the western parts of the Carolinas," said Jason Hollifield, Duke Energy's storm director for the Carolinas.

"While Duke Energy workers have made substantial progress overall, extremely difficult and targeted work lies ahead before the company can restore additional customers in the hardest-hit communities," Duke Energy said.

Meanwhile, Milton is on a rare west-to-east path through the Gulf of Mexico and is likely to bring a deadly storm surge of 10 feet (3 meters) or more of flooding to much of Florida's Gulf Coast.

Here are the major outages by state:

State Outages

North Carolina 81,396

Georgia 42,871

Texas 20,840

California 9,076

South Carolina 8,956

163,139

Total Out

(Reporting by Rahul Paswan and Daksh Grover in Bengaluru)