As of Tuesday morning, Hurricane Milton was just over 500 miles southwest of Tampa, Fla, and expected to make landfall late Wednesday night.

What might sound like silly logic has become one of the most reliable ways for Southerners and even federal officials to gauge a storm's severity and identify communities most in need of immediate aid. The Waffle House Index was created by a federal emergency management official and is still used today.

On Tuesday in Macon, families made their way to the center of the state — and hoped the best for the Florida communities they left behind. 

Gov. Brian Kemp issued a state of emergency Tuesday for 38 Georgia counties likely to be affected by Hurricane Milton.

On the Tuesday, October 8th edition of Georgia Today: GEMA response to Hurricane Milton; and Atlanta's pandas are headed home. 

Rumors, misinformation and lies about the federal government’s response to Hurricane Helene have run rampant since the storm made landfall, especially around FEMA funding.

State officials say Milton could be one of the largest storm evacuations from Florida since Irma in 2017. What do Floridians leaving the state and coming our way need to know? 

Debris and saturated ground from Hurricane Helene could make Georgia more vulnerable to Milton.

Milton grew quickly into a Category 5 storm Monday morning and is forecast to make landfall in Florida midweek. The state could see its largest evacuation orders since 2017.

Hurricane Milton is expected to reach maximum wind speeds of 145 miles per hour. The National Hurricane Center urged Florida residents to complete storm preparations and seek safety before Wednesday.

The U.S. government's top disaster relief official said Sunday that false claims and conspiracy theories about the federal response to Hurricane Helene -- spread most prominently by Donald Trump -- are "demoralizing" aid workers and creating fear in people who need recovery assistance.

Former President Donald Trump returned to Butler, Pennsylvania, the site of the first assassination attempt against him, to rally his supporters just a month before Election Day.

Month-old twin boys are the youngest known victims of Hurricane Helene. The twins died alongside their mother when a large tree fell through the roof of their home in Thomson, Georgia, last week.

Masters chairman Fred Ridley says Augusta National sustained a lot of damage from Hurricane Helene, just like the rest of the area. Ridley is in Japan for the Asia-Pacific Amateur. He says he's confident the Masters will go on as scheduled the second full week in April.

Vice President Kamala Harris has handed out meals, embraced a shaken family and surveyed Hurricane Helene's "extraordinary" path of destruction through Georgia. She left the campaign trail Wednesday to pledge ongoing federal help and personally take in scenes of toppled trees, damaged homes and lives upended.