Milton Is
Already a Storm for the Record Books. Here’s What May Come Next.
The storm
rapidly intensified on Monday.
Florida
residents are preparing for Hurricane Milton while still cleaning up debris
from Helene that some worry could get whipped up in strong winds.
I’m still
really scared and have nightmares from the last storm. I can’t believe that
there’s already another one. We’re just trying to clean up the debris out of
the salon. We lost our business. Whatever was not flooded, trying to put
everything above four or five feet. So yeah, just getting ready. We’ve got a
lot of people that put a lot of stuff on their front yards, and all this stuff
is just wind fodder that’s going to just be blowing down the street and hitting
who knows what.
Judson Jones
By Judson
Jones
Judson Jones
is a meteorologist and reporter for The Times.
https://www.nytimes.com/2024/10/07/weather/hurricane-milton-forecast-path.html
Published
Oct. 7, 2024
Updated Oct.
8, 2024, 9:04 a.m. ET
Meteorologists
were glued to their computers on Monday morning, watching virtual data as the
Air Force Reserve Hurricane Hunter airplane made pass after pass through the
eye of Hurricane Milton. Every time it did, it found the storm’s pressure had
dropped and the eyewall wind speeds had increased, indicating that it was
becoming more intense by the minute.
The
hurricane went from a Category 1 storm at midnight to a Category 5 hurricane by
noon. And it didn’t stop there.
By 8 p.m. on
Monday, the storm’s maximum sustained wind speeds had increased to 180 miles
per hour, making Milton one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes ever. Based on
wind speed, it joined a handful of other hurricanes to rival the strongest
Atlantic storm ever recorded: a 1980 hurricane named Allen, which had a peak
wind speed of 190 m.p.h. before it made landfall along the United States-Mexico
border.
As a small,
compact system, however, Milton was more similar to Hurricane Wilma in 2005,
which holds the record for the lowest pressure in a hurricane, another measure
of a storm’s intensity.
Its small
size, an excess of extremely warm waters in the Gulf of Mexico and calm
atmospheric conditions allowed Milton to “explosively” intensify, as hurricane
center forecasters noted Monday afternoon.
Sign up for
Your Places: Extreme Weather. Get
notified about extreme weather before it happens with custom alerts for places
in the U.S. you choose. Get it sent to your inbox.
The standard
meteorological definition of “rapid intensification” is 30 knots in 24 hours,
or roughly 35 miles per hour daily. Milton increased by more than double this
definition on Monday, at a pace similar to that of Wilma and another record
storm, Hurricane Felix in 2007.
Hurricane
Rita, which reached 180 m.p.h. wind speeds in 2005, created extensive damage
when it made landfall in Louisiana, blowing windows out of buildings and
pushing a strong surge inland. Rita packed a punch despite weakening to a
Category 3 before landfall, something Milton is also likely to do as it nears
Florida.
At some
point, Milton will stop intensifying.
Most
Category 5 storms weaken through an eyewall replacement cycle, when a new wall
of thunderstorms begins to form around the smaller inner eyewall, choking out
its moisture source and creating a much larger eye of the hurricane.
This
occurred overnight, reducing Milton’s wind speeds back to Category 4 strength
Tuesday morning. That evolution will likely cause Milton, which was fairly tiny
on Monday, to grow physically larger but gradually weaken on Tuesday.
It had to go
through an eyewall replacement cycle soon, Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane expert
at Colorado State University, said on Monday afternoon.
After an
eyewall replacement cycle, a storm usually intensifies again, as Milton may do
slightly Tuesday. But the turbulent conditions in the eastern Gulf of Mexico —
called wind shear, or the change of airspeed and direction with height — may
limit its ability to strengthen and may even weaken the storm further.
This same
interaction may again cause the storm to grow, making the system a large and
powerful hurricane at landfall in Florida, with life-threatening hazards at the
coastline and well inland.
“This is a
very serious situation,” forecasters from the National Hurricane Center said
Tuesday morning, warning that “Milton has the potential to be one of the most
destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida.”
When a storm
grows larger, the surge can increase as the winds cover a greater distance from
its center. The wind helps create the surge, which acts similarly to pushing
water with your finger; now, imagine how much water you could push with your
arm, instead.
Here’s how
changes in the storm’s path could affect residents.
As the storm
approaches Florida in the coming days, its most likely path, as of Tuesday
morning, is through the central part of the state. The exact path it takes will
have huge ramifications over where the storm surge will hit, and where it
won’t.
For example,
if the storm is tracking toward the northeast and makes landfall just west of
Tampa Bay, the surge will push right through up the mouth of the bay. If the
storm makes landfall farther south, Tampa Bay might be spared, but anywhere
south of the center path of the storm will have a terrible surge.
Another
thing to consider is that another area of disturbed weather has been bringing
flooding rains to the Florida Peninsula ahead of Milton. As the state just saw
with Hurricane Helene, devastating effects can occur when rain falls ahead of a
hurricane’s landfall. The amount of rain that falls will depend on how quickly
the storm moves across the Peninsula, and where it makes landfall.
Judson Jones
is a meteorologist and reporter for The Times who forecasts and covers extreme
weather. More about Judson Jones
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário