The mayor of Tampa Bay, a city in the crosshairs of Hurricane Milton, issued a stern warning to Floridians who do not heed calls to evacuate ahead of the powerful storm.

“If you choose to stay … you will die,” Mayor Jane Castor said bluntly on CNN while discussing the dangers of Milton, a “literally catastrophic” Category 5 hurricane that was hitting the coast of Sunshine State rushes.

The powerful storm could hit Florida as early as Wednesday and could potentially be more destructive than deadly Hurricane Helene, which ripped through parts of the Sunshine State just last week.

Castor emphasized that trying to weather the storm would — and could not — prove fatal. Now is the time to flee, she urged residents in the evacuation zones.

“I can tell you now that they may have done this to others, nothing like this has ever happened before,” Castor said on CNN. “And Helene was a wake-up call, which is catastrophic in the truest sense of the word.

“And I can say without any dramatization that if you choose to stay in one of these evacuation areas, you will die.”

Castor, who has been in office since 2019, noted that some forecasts are predicting a 10- to 12-foot surge. Helene’s tidal wave was 6 feet.

“And that has been literally devastating for so many in our coastal region,” she said of Helene’s disastrous journey.

Milton is already the second strongest Gulf hurricane in history – and experts expect it to get even stronger as it approaches Florida. The storm is already blowing at a breathtaking 180 miles per hour and heavy rain is also expected.

“This is something I have never seen in my life, and I can tell you that anyone born and raised in the Tampa Bay area has never seen anything like this before,” she emphasized. “People need to get out.”

“If we have this predicted storm surge, it is not survivable,” she reiterated.

By Monday evening, there was already a long line of cars out and supermarket shelves across the area were empty of panic buying.