Florida menaced by rapidly strengthening Hurricane Milton

Hurricane Milton is threatening to grow even stronger, possibly reaching Category 4 power, and may spark the largest evacuation in seven years as it aims for Florida’s Gulf Coast and Tampa.

The storm has the potential to cause billions of dollars in damage and heap more misery on a state and region still reeling from Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.

Milton’s top winds reached 85 miles per hour, up from 45 mph earlier, meaning it’s rapidly intensifying. That situation, in which a storm’s winds strengthen by 35 mph in 24 hours or less, can have dangerous consequences for people in its path, the U.S. National Hurricane Center said. Prior to landfall Oct. 9, the storm is on course for 145-mph winds. It’s likely to hit shore a bit weaker but still able to tear roofs off buildings, snap trees and cause long-lasting power outages.

Some computer models say Milton could become a Category 5 as it nears Florida. In addition, while compact now, Milton will likely become a large storm at landfall, “with very dangerous impacts spread out over a big area,” said Eric Blake, a forecaster at the center.

Governor Ron DeSantis has declared an emergency in 51 counties and said the entire Florida peninsula on the Gulf side has potential to suffer major effects from storm surge, which will likely pick up sometime in the afternoon of Oct. 9.

“You’re going to have potentially major power outages,” DeSantis said at a news conference, adding that utilities are allocating resources for power restoration as outages are likely to be worse than what Helene caused. “We also have almost 6,000 ambulances ready to assist,” he said.

In a statement Sunday, President Joe Biden said he had been briefed on the storm’s potential impact and federal efforts to position life-saving resources.

Mexico has issued a hurricane watch on the north coast of the Yucatan Peninsula, which Milton is forecast to graze.

“I urge Floridians to finalize your storm preparations now, enact your plan,” Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the state’s Division of Emergency Management, said in a video briefing. “I highly encourage you to evacuate. We are preparing and I have the state emergency response team preparing for the largest evacuation that we have seen most likely since 2017 Hurricane Irma.”

Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA was “absolutely ready” for Milton.

“We have started planning for this days ago, even before it formed. We know that it’s headed straight towards Florida,” she said on ABC’s This Week.

“We will move more resources in there to support their needs, but we have a lot of people in Florida already,” she added.

Milton would be the second major hurricane to hit the U.S. in two weeks following Helene, which killed at least 225 people across the South and caused as much as $250 billion in losses and damages by AccuWeather’s estimates. So far, 13 storms have formed across the Atlantic Ocean in the six-month hurricane season and four hurricanes have hit the U.S., including Helene and Beryl in July that shut down power in Houston, the fourth-most populous US city.

As Milton moves eastward across the Gulf, it will be fueled by very warm water and almost no adverse atmospheric conditions, Jack Beven, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said in a forecast analysis, though it may weaken somewhat from dry air and wind shear as it nears the shore.

For Milton, “the worst-case scenario” would be for the storm to hit the Florida coast just north of Tampa, said Brandon Buckingham, a meteorologist at commercial-forecaster AccuWeather Inc. Hurricanes spin counter-clockwise in the Northern Hemisphere, so in such a spot Milton would push all of its worst storm surge and winds into Tampa Bay, endangering the city and region. More than 3.2 million people live in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.

The effects may be even worse because Helene’s winds and surge wiped out many beaches along Florida’s west coast, leaving the area more vulnerable to Milton’s power.

Milton will likely push hurricane-strength wind gusts across Florida’s citrus-growing areas when it comes ashore on Oct. 9, said Ryan Truchelut, president of commercial forecaster WeatherTiger.

Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research, on Sunday predicted an economic impact of between $50 billion and $75 billion. The peak winds are staying south of Tampa and Orlando, but if the storm moves only about 50 miles north, his models show that it could become a $150 billion storm. “We are on a knife edge here,” he wrote.

Across the entire Gulf of Mexico, water temperatures are running anywhere from 1F to nearly 5F above normal, said Isaac Longley, a meteorologist with AccuWeather. Milton will cross the warm Loop Current in the Gulf of Mexico before it reaches Florida, a patch of water that also boosted Hurricane Helene as it neared the state. The warm water is going to “serve as fuel” for Milton and it will likely become a Category 4 hurricane by the morning of Oct. 8.

The Loop Current is an area of warm water that travels up from the Caribbean into the Gulf of Mexico, then exits via the Florida Straits and flows into the Gulf Stream.

Longley said Milton will likely make landfall near Tampa Bay on around 5 p.m. Oct. 9 as a Category 3.

The hurricane center stresses it’s still too early to say for certain where Milton will strike, but residents along the shoreline in Florida need to prepare.

“Regardless of the details, there is increasing confidence that a powerful hurricane with life-threatening hazards will be affecting portions of the Florida west coast around the middle of this week,” Beven said.

In addition to Milton, forecasters are also tracking hurricanes Kirk and Leslie in the far Atlantic. Kirk is forecast to make landfall Oct. 9 in France as post-tropical storm. The storm is also producing large swells across the ocean, affecting the U.S. and Canada as well as islands in the Caribbean.

_____