Florida’s storm-battered Gulf Coast raced against a Category 5 hurricane Monday as workers sprinted to pick up heaps of appliances and other street debris left over from Helene late last month and highways were clogged with people fleeing ahead of the storm.

Hurricane Milton is continuing to rapidly intensify before its expected landfall along Florida’s Gulf Coast sometime Wednesday. The National Hurricane Center on Monday issued a hurricane watch for a stretch of the coastline including Tampa Bay, which remained roughly in the middle of the forecast cone.