The Daily Populous Tuesday October 8th, 2024 night edition
Authored by nbcnews.com and submitted by scrandis

Life-threatening storm surges are expected to hit Florida's Gulf Coast this week with Hurricane Milton, which was upgraded Monday afternoon to a Category 5 storm over the southern Gulf of Mexico.

The storm first strengthened into a Category 3 hurricane by 7 a.m., and, by 9 a.m. ET, it had rapidly grown to Category 4, the National Hurricane Center said.

In a matter of a few hours, Milton "explosively intensified" into a Category 5 hurricane. Milton now churns with fierce 180-mph winds, the NHC said in a 4 p.m. ET update. It's about 105 miles west-northwest of Progreso, Mexico, and 700 miles southwest of Tampa.

The storm is forecast to make landfall Wednesday evening in Florida, which, along with the wider Southeastern U.S., continues to recover from the impact of Hurricane Helene. Widespread evacuation orders are in effect in Florida.

As many as 15 million people are under flood watches across the Florida Peninsula, and 11 million are at risk for tropical tornadoes Tuesday and Wednesday.

By key measures, Milton is shaping up to be one of the most powerful Atlantic hurricanes on record, and it has s done so in an astonishingly short amount of time, evolving from Tropical Depression 14 to a Category 5 hurricane in less than three days.

Its low-pressure readings — the lower the number, the more potent the storm — are among the 10 lowest on record, and its wind speeds are the highest recorded for an Atlantic storm this late in a season, Colorado State University meteorologist Phil Klotzbach said.

"Milton is the strongest hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico by either wind or pressure since Hurricane Rita in 2005," he said by email.

Rita, which raged in late September of that year, is the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the Gulf, according to the National Weather Service.

"Over the next few days, Tampa Bay is faced with the biggest hurricane it’s had in more than 100 years," Pinellas County's Cathie Perkins, director of a regional emergency management agency, said at a news conference Monday. "This is serious."

askalotlol on October 7th, 2024 at 15:12 UTC »

Category 4 at 9 am EST.

This has all day to gain strength.

This is going to make Cat 5.

edit: It's now Category 5 with 160 mile per hour winds.

Th3_Admiral_ on October 7th, 2024 at 13:44 UTC »

It's crazy how quickly this has grown. I woke up with weather alerts on my phone from when it changed from 1 to 2, and then 2 to 3. And just now got the one for upgrading to a Category 4. The total time between all of these was only 3 hours.

WagTheKat on October 7th, 2024 at 13:32 UTC »

Even if it drops back to Cat 3 (or 2), this needs to be how we think about it.

Here in the Tampa area, and much of the state, there is damage from Helene remaining. Debris has not been cleaned up, the soil is saturated and whatever category this landfalls as will be more dangerous than other storms.

The effects will be magnified.

And many people in this area think they have been through a hurricane. The truth is, few have. We have been on the fringe of weather affected by hurricanes, mostly. Or seen the weakened remnants of storms that had already crossed the state. And that were not much more than tropical storm strength.

There is a tendency here toward apathy due to many slightly bad weather experiences that were really imposters of hurricanes by the time we felt any effects.

I know people who almost brag about being through 5-6-7-8 hurricanes in the last 20 years who live here. The worst most of us suffered was a loss of power for a couple days or the need to pick up some fallen branches.

This looks like it will be very different. And that, also, has been said many times.

Thus the complacency.