October 7, 2024
4 min learn
Nonetheless Reeling from Hurricane Helene, Florida Braces for Second Main Storm
Elements 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 by way of Getty Pictures
Editor’s Be aware (10/7/24): This story will probably be up to date because the scenario unfolds.
In components 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.
Milton is at present a Class 5 storm with 175-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 present 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 subsequent day. This can be Tampa Bay’s first direct hit from a critical storm in a couple of century, though the area, which is house to greater than three million individuals, is not any stranger to hurricane injury.
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“It is a very critical scenario,” 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 grew to become 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 deliver a variety of threats to west-central Florida: robust winds that would end in energy outages lasting as much as every week, storm surges of eight to 12 ft, rainfall totaling 5 to 10 inches, with as much as 15 inches in some places, and doubtlessly tornadoes. That’s all taking place lower than two weeks after Hurricane Helene, which made landfall greater than 100 miles north of Tampa Bay however nonetheless wrought critical 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 sooner and sooner and sooner and never let it recede,” Davis says.
As well as, Helene stripped the realm of native defenses corresponding to sand dunes, leaving the area extra weak to future surges. All informed, Hurricane Milton might trigger twice as a lot storm surge round Tampa Bay as Hurricane Helene did.
The realm can be notably 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 season, 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 capable of soak up further water.
A few of 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 referred to as speedy intensification, throughout which a storm’s quickest sustained winds improve in velocity by at the very least 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 very scary scenario.”
As of noon EDT on October 7, the storm’s most sustained winds have 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 endure speedy intensification.
One other concern is that scientists are already seeing indicators that Hurricane Milton is constructing a brand new eye wall, the robust winds that type the guts of a storm that surrounds the present core. Inside a day, this course of may cause the unique eye wall to break down, giving strategy to the brand new construction, which permits the storm’s clouds—and injury—to cowl extra floor. “What’s actually regarding with all these eye wall alternative 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 thought to be notably weak to critical hurricanes, which it usually experiences solely peripherally. “We have now been brushed by many, many, many, many storms,” Davis says. However the final time a significant 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 probably 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 shouldn’t be anticipated to hit communities within the U.S. past Florida.
In Florida, nevertheless, the dangers are very actual. “I simply need individuals to take this extra severely than they’ve taken another storm,” Davis says. “This will probably be a storm that individuals is not going to neglect.”
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 probability to be the worst catastrophe in hurricanes in U.S. historical past,” she says. “It’s that a lot of a possible dire scenario, particularly if it makes a direct hit on Tampa or one of many very populated areas alongside [Florida’s] west coast.”
