Hurricane Milton
Hurricane Milton brought destruction and chaos to Florida
October is the month of hurricanes in Florida, but this year, no sooner has it recovered from the devastating Helene, than Milton arrives, causing the region of Tampa Bay, a tourist city with the well-known Sea World, next to Orlando, the where are Disney amusement parks.
Initially a small, compact hurricane, it quickly grew into a massive storm, intensifying at one of the fastest rates on record. Milton caused dangerous sea level rise on parts of Florida's west and east coasts, with parts of the Tampa Bay metropolitan area partially submerged. The hurricane's development was due to record temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which helped to intensify it. Milton later increased in size as he underwent the eyewall replacement process.
Pacific influence
Hurricanes that affect the U.S. generally follow a similar pattern: They emerge as tropical storms off the west coast of Africa, cross the Atlantic and gain strength as they enter the warm waters of the Caribbean. However, part of Milton's origin is in the eastern Pacific Ocean. It formed when the remnants of a tropical depression in the Pacific crossed the Yucatan Peninsula and encountered a parked front in the Gulf of Mexico.
The last hurricane to hit Florida after forming in that same region — the Bay of Campeche, Mexico — occurred in 1867. When the tropical depression entered the Gulf, it offered "a little bit of vorticity, that measure of rotation," to the storm system that was there, according to Chris Slocum, a physical scientist at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA). Milton then organized himself and moved away from other systems. This separation allowed atmospheric pressure to decrease and winds to intensify, as Milton began to draw air into its center and energy from the warm ocean.
Small but powerful
Milton started out as a very small storm, which allowed it to conserve its angular momentum, rotating quickly around a narrow eye. In the Gulf, he found record ocean temperatures and warm, moist air—the necessary ingredients for its intensification.
On Monday, central pressure in Milton's core fell at rates described by one scientist as "insane" as the storm strengthened. Central pressure is directly related to the strength of a storm and the speed of its winds. "This is horrible," said hurricane expert John Morales, emotional as he discussed the immense drop in pressure. Milton's wind speeds increased by 90 mph in about 24 hours. This value far exceeded the benchmark for what scientists consider rapid intensification: a gain of 56 km/h in 24 hours.
"It went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in less than two days, which is out of character," said Karthik Balaguru, a climate scientist at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist, called Milton "one of the most rapidly intensifying hurricanes ever seen in the Atlantic." Milton's winds — which exceeded 282 km/h — were unprecedented for a hurricane in October. It is the strongest hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico since Hurricane Rita in 2005.
New eye wall
In the Northern Hemisphere, hurricanes rotate counterclockwise around generally cloud-free eyes. Between Monday night and Tuesday, bands of rain formed on the outer edge of Milton. These storms grouped together and formed a second ring, creating a new eyewall and tripling the radius where maximum wind speeds were recorded, Slocum explained.
This phenomenon, known as eyewall replacement, often causes storms to grow in size but lose some wind strength, which is what happened to Milton. This process can occur multiple times as a storm develops. After the process is complete, the hurricane may begin to gain intensity again, if conditions permit. "It's like she's shedding her skin. After switching, it can intensify again. That's exactly what we saw with Milton," Lin said.
A detour
On Tuesday afternoon, Milton "oscillated", changing its predicted trajectory and shifting the impact projection further south. These deviations occur due to the complex internal dynamics of the eye wall. Lin compared the dynamic to a spinning top. "Sometimes when you give it a push, it wobbles a little bit before reorienting itself," he explained.
A significant deviation can alter a storm's trajectory and determine which areas will receive the strongest impact. Forecasters predict up to 4 meters of storm surge rise. If the storm moves a little south, it could keep the worst of the flooding out of Tampa Bay, which is particularly vulnerable. Hurricane Irma in 2017 veered east, helping to avoid a projected surge of more than 10 feet in the region.
When Milton makes landfall, areas south of the eye of the storm are expected to receive the strongest gusts that will push water onshore, causing storm surge. This is due to the angle at which the storm is approaching the Florida peninsula and the counterclockwise direction of the winds around its core.
What's next
Milton weakened as it approached the Florida peninsula, largely because it encountered the phenomenon of vertical wind shear, which refers to changes in wind speed or direction at higher levels of the atmosphere. However, Lin warned, "this does not make the hurricane any less dangerous."
Even with slower winds, Milton is expected to remain a major hurricane until it makes landfall Wednesday night. After touching the ground, Milton must cross the peninsula and head to the sea. Time on land will deprive the storm of the energy it draws from the ocean's heat, which will cause it to weaken quickly — like a top losing speed, Lin explained.
Breaking the strange silence
A new report from the group World Weather Attribution on Hurricane Helene — which made landfall in Florida on September 26 — found that climate change likely made the storm's wind speeds 11 percent more intense and increased rainfall by about 10 percent.
Researchers predict Milton will behave similarly and be even worse due to climate change. Due to warmer-than-normal ocean conditions in the North Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico and the emergence of the La Niña weather pattern, which is associated with hurricanes, meteorologists have predicted an extremely active hurricane season this year. However, in mid-September, during the typical peak of hurricane activity, the season remained unusually calm, which perplexed researchers and made them question whether their predictions were wrong, despite the heat in the ocean—the "fuel" of hurricanes. hurricanes.
This eerie silence was broken in late September when hurricanes Helene and Milton struck. After Milton makes landfall, the Gulf Coast will have recorded the second highest number of hurricanes in a year. "This would tie 2024 with 2005 and 2020 for the 2nd most hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast on record, behind only 1886," meteorologist Philip Klotzbach wrote on social media.
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