October 7, 2024
5 min learn
Nonetheless Reeling from Hurricane Helene, Florida Braces for Second Main Storm
Components of Florida nonetheless recovering from Hurricane Helene will face their second main storm in simply two weeks
Residents of Pinellas County, Florida, fill sandbags at John Chesnut Sr. Park in Palm Harbor, Fla., on October 6, 2024. Florida’s governor has declared a state of emergency on October 5 as forecasters warned that Hurricane Milton was anticipated to make landfall later this week.
Bryan R. Smith/AFP through Getty Photos
Editor’s Notice (10/7/24): This story shall be up to date because the state of affairs unfolds.
In elements of Florida nonetheless cleansing up from Hurricane Helene’s injury lower than two weeks in the past, preparations are effectively underway for a second damaging storm, Hurricane Milton.
As of 5 P.M. EDT on October 7, Milton is at the moment a Class 5 storm with 180-mile-per-hour most sustained winds off the coast of Mexico’s Yucatán peninsula. It has quickly intensified and seems to be heading northeast, straight towards the western coast of Florida, with the worst influence at the moment centered round Tampa. The primary of its rains are anticipated to reach in Florida late on October 8, with the storm itself making landfall the following day. This can be Tampa Bay’s first direct hit from a severe storm in a couple of century, though the area, which is residence to greater than three million individuals, is not any stranger to hurricane injury.
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“It is a very severe state of affairs,” says Rick Davis, a meteorologist on the Nationwide Climate Service’s Tampa Bay workplace. “It’s going to have an effect on lots of people within the state of Florida.”
Milton turned a Class 5 hurricane on October 7, 2024, because it continued to accentuate over the Gulf of Mexico.
CIRA/NOAA/NESDIS/STAR GOES-East
He says that Hurricane Milton is predicted to carry a variety of threats to west-central Florida: robust winds that would lead to energy outages lasting as much as per week, storm surges of eight to 12 ft, rainfall totaling 5 to 10 inches, with as much as 15 inches in some places, and probably tornadoes. That’s all occurring lower than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, which made landfall greater than 100 miles north of Tampa Bay however nonetheless wrought severe injury within the area, together with inflicting the very best storm surge since recordkeeping started in 1947.
Tampa Bay is inherently weak to storm surges as a result of its offshore waters are fairly shallow, leaving nowhere for water to go however inland. Furthermore, Hurricane Milton is predicted to reach at a proper angle and hit Florida’s coast head-on. Whereas an arrival at a extra indirect angle can push water alongside the coast, a perpendicular association causes a steeper surge as a result of it extra completely pushes water inland. The latter would “pile up water quicker and quicker and quicker and never let it recede,” Davis says.
As well as, Helene stripped the realm of native defenses equivalent to sand dunes, leaving the area extra weak to future surges. All instructed, Hurricane Milton may trigger twice as a lot storm surge round Tampa Bay as Hurricane Helene did. (Hurricane Helene killed not less than 230 individuals throughout the southeastern U.S., together with 19 in Florida. A dozen of the latter deaths occurred across the Tampa Bay area.)
The realm can be significantly weak to flooding proper now, each alongside the shoreline and farther inland. Even earlier than Helene’s hit, the realm noticed a very moist summer time, Davis says, leaving the bottom saturated and rivers operating excessive. Then got here Helene’s surge and downpours; the storm additionally scattered particles and pushed sand into the realm’s stormwater drains, leaving the area even much less in a position to take in extra water.
Among the particulars of Hurricane Milton’s arrival are nonetheless unsure: There’s nonetheless time for the storm’s wind depth and precise path into Florida to vary. The hurricane’s depth is especially unpredictable as a result of it underwent a course of known as speedy intensification, throughout which a storm’s quickest sustained winds enhance in velocity by not less than 35 miles per hour throughout a 24-hour interval.
Hurricane Milton has blown that definition out of the water. “It went from a Class 1 to a Class 5 in 18 hours,” says Kristen Corbosiero, an atmospheric scientist on the College at Albany. “It’s a extremely scary state of affairs.” In keeping with the New York Occasions, solely two Atlantic hurricanes on document, Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007, are identified to have made greater leaps in depth over a 24-hour interval.
As of noon EDT on October 7, the storm’s most sustained winds had been blowing at 175 miles per hour; the earlier morning its winds had been simply 65 miles per hour. Local weather change is predicted to extend the variety of storms that bear speedy intensification. It’s too early to research intimately the position of local weather change on this particular storm or the season as a complete, however different hurricanes this yr, together with Hurricanes Beryl, Francine and Helene, additionally underwent speedy intensification. And like Hurricane Helene, Milton has fed upon the fairly heat waters which have characterised the Gulf of Mexico this yr.
One other concern is that scientists are already seeing indicators that Hurricane Milton is constructing a brand new eye wall, the robust winds that kind the guts of a storm that surrounds the present core. Inside a day, this course of could cause the unique eye wall to break down, giving solution to the brand new construction, which permits the storm’s clouds—and injury—to cowl extra floor. “What’s actually regarding with some of these eye wall substitute cycles is that the wind area of the storm grows greater,” Corbosiero says.
The specifics are unlikely to considerably change the severity of hazards the area experiences, nevertheless, Davis says. And Tampa Bay is understood to be significantly weak to severe hurricanes, which it sometimes experiences solely peripherally. “We have now been brushed by many, many, many, many storms,” Davis says. However the final time a serious hurricane made landfall within the area was in 1921. It hasn’t seen a direct hit from any hurricane in any respect since 1946. Milton will doubtless break that pattern.
After hitting the west-central coast of Florida, Hurricane Milton is predicted to cross the state after which observe throughout the Atlantic Ocean. Bermuda may see results over the weekend, however the storm is just not anticipated to hit communities within the U.S. past Florida. (On October 7 and eight, earlier than Milton reaches Florida, the storm has been forecast to trigger 4 to 6 ft of storm surge and two to 4 inches of rainfall within the Yucatán peninsula.)
In Florida, nevertheless, the dangers are very actual. “I simply need individuals to take this extra critically than they’ve taken every other storm,” Davis says. “This shall be a storm that folks is not going to overlook.”
Corbosiero echoes that concern, particularly given the truth that Milton comes so shut on the heels of Helene and its injury. “This actually does have the chance to be the worst catastrophe in hurricanes in U.S. historical past,” she says. “It’s that a lot of a possible dire state of affairs, particularly if it makes a direct hit on Tampa or one of many very populated areas alongside [Florida’s] west coast.”
