Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 hurricane late Monday morning.
Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.
Milton now ranks as the third-greatest 24-hour wind speed intensification for a hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. (Records are based on data since the satellite era began in the 1960s.)
You must log in or register to comment.
I’m gonna tell myself that this is finally bad enough to spur widespread action on global warming as a way of feeling better about it and you can all preemptively shut up with your reality checks.
In Germany more than 200 people died in a severe flooding in 2021. Just 2 month prior the conservative party CDU removed flood protection laws in one of the states most affected. In one of the towns completely destroyed they were again voted strongest just a few months later.
Tbh I’ve learned a lot about how thermal energy affects these storms and I gotta say, the only people who are gonna be living in Florida 20 years from now are people who live in submarines.
We ought to be executing oil company CEOs for treason.
Are you doing okay? I feel kind of the same way I think.
I’m gonna tell myself that this is finally bad enough to spur widespread action on global warming
I, too, want to believe that humans are capable for caring enough about themselves, each other, and their descendants in order to put in place measures to make the world better for everyone.
Hopefully it’ll take out that twat with the giant forehead
This graphic from The Weather Channel is terrifying.
Most tsunamis are less than 10 feet high
https://www.weather.gov/safety/tsunami-about
Cities can’t be protected from this long-term.
Headed straight for L Ron Hubbard.
I’m surprised DeSantis hasn’t required that the storm surge be listed in meters to make it appear smaller and less of an issue.
Meters are communist. He’s dumb enough to require it be listed in leagues.
Use decameters to make the number smaller and less people will understand or care.
Florida’s elevation
That imagine is in meters, so it’s bad, but not quite as bad at first glance.
That’s pretty bad… How is it so flat??
So hurricanes can pass across without losing too much energy.
It is all in the design.
I wasnt trying to deceive, but everything in pink and blue is gonna get fucked.
He’s coming for his red stapler. You stole it. Now it is time for revenge.
Milton could put strychnine in the guacamole.
Oh shit, those numbers are feet, not inches. That took me a moment. Fuuuuuck.
For those across the pond, 3658mm of rain (12’)
Really sets it in seeing it in mm
No that is storm surge.
So it’s the hurricane pushes that much water onto the shore through force and can get that high of water above sea level.So more akin to a slow tsunami where a hurricane pushes up to 3.6M of water up onto the land then it rains more on top of that. Storm surge is mostly the reason for the houses on pillars too.
Excuse me, is that feet???
I had to do a double take on that.
Terrifyingly, yes it is.
Holy fuck people. It says right in the image that it’s in meters.
So not only lemmings can’t read, a comment asking for info staring you in the face has 55 upvotes… and the wrong answer has 38.
deleted by creator
Well, that’s egg on my face. Thanks for the correction.
deleted by creator
Indents are hard to do well. Maybe impossible? Should be effortless to read but seems to never happen. Maybe just one of those things.
Could be worse… at least it’s not in Meters.
Yet.
It is in meters and since that an elevation map of Florida, that is the better scenario.
Basically all the areas in purple and dark blue are low enough for the storm surge to flood them. If it was feet, then the blue-green will probably be underwater as well.
The question about ft came right below the elevation map, but it was a top-level comment on the OP and not a sub-comment about the elevation map.
Seems you were confused about this order of comments too but unfortunately you’ve taken downvotes for it.
The key says elevation is in meters, so it’s about 3 times less terrifying.
/s
Some “Day After Tomorrow” kinda shit right there
SWEET! Surfs up!
To soon?
You’re surfing all the way to sooner island from Florida‽
Where is sooner island?
before later island
Oklahoma, duh.
Just never heard of it called sooner island
Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote a book called Lucifer’s Hammer about a comet hitting the Earth. There’s a part where all the surfers in the ocean off of L.A. know they’re going to die, so they decide to ride the tsunami and get taken out one by one as they get smashed into buildings.
One pancake to go!
I think I heard about the book you were talking about
Unfortunately, at least from videos I’ve seen of the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Fukushima tsunami, tsunamis don’t really “break” like good surfing waves and instead seem to act more like a large swell that keeps going instead of ebbing.
(A mega-tsunami from a comet impact might be so large it would act differently, though.)
I’ll be honest, it’s one of the least believable parts of a book which overall reads as quite plausible, but it’s a fun chapter. Neither of the authors are/were scientists, so they were bound to get some things wrong. It was also written almost 50 years ago, so I’m guessing the science they did work with has been supplanted in a lot of ways since then.
That would make for a great scene in a disaster movie.
Honestly, the whole book would make a great miniseries. Probably too much for just one movie.
Too bad Larry Niven is and Jerry Pournelle was such right-wing assholes, because their published some great stuff.
No. There’s always a bunch of surfers that go out for hurricane waves. I assume some have a death wish.
Ok, Bodie.
If only we could have foreseen this somehow
Agreed. Maybe we can measure the temperature globally and compare it to past readings. Nevermind, that would be crazy.
That sounds like socialism!
Longer article if you want more info: https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-milton-helene-florida-557c5c512135e0a8661b298e45e17c92
At least the insurance companies will only have to rebuild some houses once after 2 hurricanes
Insurance companies don’t build shit. They just collect money from people, and sometimes give some of it back.
Begrudgingly cover*
unless they can find a way to screw you over for profit, then they absolutely will no matter how ridiculous the “reasoning”*
I believe it was Katrina where the insurance said it was wind damage when you only had flood insurance, but if you’re neighbor only had wind coverage they’d tell them it was water damage.
Right storm. Wrong details.
They (insurance companies) were claiming it as flood/surge damage, even if wind ripped off your roof to let the water inside. Wind was covered, water wasn’t. Companies were sued for trying to blanket deny an area based on one generic engineering report, or denying coverage if flood waters came through after wind destroyed a place. Insurance com0anies don’t typically offer flood insurance to a lot of places and if homeowners want it, they have to buy it through the federal government.
They’re actually required to give 85% of everything back, so they give back most of it. It seems like Florida is becoming too much of a hassle to insure, though. Some companies have pulled out of florida.
Does that 85% include their costs or is that the full amount returned to policy holders?
Full amount that is legally required to pay back out in insurer coverage every year. The other 15% covers pay roll, rent, buildings, bonus’, overhead, etc. Literally everything else. Same deal for medical insurance.
Everyone in FL should have pulled out.
This joke works on multiple levels and I’m happy about that.
Holy shit a triple entendre!
If people don’t have the common sense to not build houses in places that are guaranteed to be destroyed by a natural disaster sooner than later, then I shouldn’t have to subsidize their rebuilding costs through my insurance premiums.
Yeah, used to be that insurance costs were almost directly skewed based on risk. But then people were upset that it costed so much to insure some places(the ones that should be prohibitively expensive to insure). And then slowly over time they baked in little increases in price everywhere else to subsidise huge price cuts in those areas to out-compete the companies that put the onus entirely on the people taking risks. Eventually, as it became more and more widespread to do that, it became financially more viable to spread it out rather than have drastically more expensive areas. And now we all have to partially cover people who are taking way more risk than we would.
That’s communism in a nut shell, Republicans should be up in arms over it
That or build something that can stand up to being hit. Tall order, but the inner armchair engineer in me thinks it’s like, totally possible.
I think you forget, building it stronger once would cost 50% more upfront. Better to build it twice, or three times at only 100% cost each time. That way you can be the lowest bidder every time.
That’s what the people in the North Carolina mountains thought.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable place to build that’s not obviously at threat from hurricanes. But sometimes shit happens that couldn’t be easily foreseen, and THAT’S what insurance is for.
My point, however, is that insurance is NOT to make other policy holders foot the expense of someone repeatedly repairing/rebuilding after completely foreseeable/inevitable events.
To anyone that insists on having a house right on the beach on the Gulf Coast, I say, “Insure thy self.”
Many insurance companies won’t even insure homes in much of Florida.
And the rest are probably planning to.
If your policy covers wind they claim the damage is from water. If your policy covers water, they claim the damage is from wind. If your policy covers both, they claim a hurricane is exempt as an act of god.
I want to bitch about insurance companies but insurance is for something that is unavoidable.
All this shit is becoming more and more avoidable.
Which, to be fair, is really about all they can do. You CANNOT stop a hurricane from obliterating a house. There is NOTHING the average American can do about it except leave and hope it survives.
Then its dishonest to accept money for your fake business.
they are not real businesses in the insurance sense. its all federal money for flood insurance. they’re just servicers kinda like mortgage originators.
That sounds like capitalistic socialism to me. I dont even understand the notion of what you said there.
this goes into it a bit and is a good listen in general. https://overcast.fm/+AAyIOzvst0E
What insurance companies? They all backed out of Florida years ago. Now it’s state funded home insurance footing the bill.
I read a thing recently that insurance companies are getting increasingly skittish all over the country, even places that wouldn’t traditionally be considered risky, because yay, climate change.
The interesting thing about it was that insurance companies’ insurance is increasingly the thing that’s causing issues, because it’s getting harder for the risk to be spread out. That is to say that insurance companies financially rely on areas with low rates of natural disasters because they end up being a net positive due to insurance premiums and no need for payout. Fewer of these “safe” areas mean the insurance companies struggle to stay solvent and have to rely on their own insurance policies to have their back, but those meta-insurance companies have apparently been historically loud about climate change — probably because besides the government, they’re the ones who have to pony up
Here in Missouri, home owners insurance is starting to lose hail damage from coverage. Damn near 90% of the houses around my area have now replaced their roofs, and have the roofing signage out front. It’s almost a running joke now: guessing which house will be next to get one, and counting the company’s signs to see who’s making a killing.
No problem. The 0ld coots in Florida that vote won’t be around when the bill comes due.
Good thing they removed climate change from being a thing discussed in the legislature. That should fix things.
They forgot to make a law against it!
\s
SCOTUS should declare climate change unconstitutional.
Where’s the magic sharpie when you need it?
Anyone got a nuke? I have an idea.
I guess nuking Florida before the hurricane gets there would reduce the damage inflicted by the hurricane.
They are manipulating the weather! It would be clear as day if there wouldn’t be one hurricane after another.
Relief this morning when looking at the current track. At least I won’t get the core. For now.
Ohh shit.
So how much overlap is there with the previous Helene path?
Little, this is going to hit Florida directly (moving east from the gulf) and then go into the Atlantic. It won’t make it into the rest of the country, fortunately.
Unless it does one of those classic 180s where it swings back around and hits the atlantic
Minimal. Helene went north, and really only hit the pan handle area, Milton is going East and is going to pass through the middle of Florida.
Even though it was like 100 miles off shore, the Tampa Bay area had an 8 foot storm surge with Helene that killed 12 people and ruined tens of thousands of homes and businesses. There are piles of debris everywhere along the coast that are going to become projectiles in hurricane force winds of they can’t be picked up in time. Almost the entire western coast of Florida saw significant impact from Helene
That’s still probably better than if there was debris from a direct hit.
Well yes, two direct hits would be worse. Was just saying Helene had a pretty severe impact on the areas that are going to be hit directly this time
At least mid Florida is mostly higher elevation for dealing with the storm surge. The winds will be brutal.
One of the things I’m wondering about is whether Helene chopped up the water and caused some overturning/cooling that may lower surface temps.
And if it did (or did so to a meaningful degree), is that helping to temper Milton before it makes landfall?
And I guess I’m commenting here because you seemed so confident. (Maybe you’re just making it up as you go along, too. Who knows?!)
That’s probably why everyone is super split on the landfall category of the hurricane.
That should play an impact and overcast and heavy rain should make for a less welcoming Florida.
However we have seen that shallower waters by the coast have been very very hot lately and do a lot to bump up hurricanes as they near the shallows and it could intensify the storm again as it nears land.
Tampa doesn’t get hit directly by storms and they don’t generally form to category 5 hurricanes in about 12 hours in the gulf of Mexico so there is a lot of new science and prediction work to be done here so it’s a lot of guessing till it does.
The panhandle is getting a lot of rain, but there is a lot of overlap with Ian’s path… namely our house :/
For direct path on landfall, probably none unless it turns northwards. But the west coast of florida just ate the rain, storm surge and wind from Helene and will now get the full brunt of Milton.
has some solid info not only on the current data and what to expect, but WHY these things can happen.
No exclamation point for the link to show up.
It bugs out for some if I don’t include it. That’s the fediverse for you.
This storm has reached 180mph at its peak. Have you ever braced wind at that speed? I’ve ridden at 120mph on my motorcycle (at a drag strip). The wind, even with a full face helmet and visor, was so extreme that it was hard to hold on and my ears were ringing afterward despite having earplugs in. This insanity corresponds to a few seconds of a category 3 hurricane. This hurricane’s winds are like that felt by squids on literbikes doing top speed runs.
…i’ve done a buck fourty-five in my convertible with the top down: it’s LOUD…at one fifty-five, pushing with all two hundred horsepower, my car can’t make any further headway against the wind and buildings are a lot less aerodynamically efficient…
…i’ve ridden out a half-dozen hurricanes but category fives are get-out-of-town devastating…
Yeah, I def prefer octopuses on gallonbikes, imperial cephalopods with 8 arms only FTW!
To add to what you’ve said: if you’ve ever hit a bug (or anything else) at those speeds you notice it. A junebug will leave a fairly decent bruise on exposed skin, and for comparison a paintball out of a marker travels about 190 mph.
Imagine the random far more substantial debris flying around during a hurricane near those speeds.
Florida gonna look like Fallout4 post Hurricane Milton and Hurricane season ain’t even over…
Surely climate change had nothing to do with this!
Doesn’t matter, as long as companies like BP, Chevron, et al can keep extracting that value! They would personally strangle your grandma if they thought it would make them more money.
Did Helene not eradicate all the idiots?
How are there more?
Graghhhhhh.
What. The. Fuck.
I’m watching the live stream from WFLA, which is a St. Petersburg station. He’s a photo of a bridge leaving the area right now (just after noon on Tuesday Florida time.)
Either most people with cars have evacuated or there are a lot of people who may learn the last lesson of their lives. I hope the former.
Also, the eye apparently will pass right over Cape Canaveral.
They’ve been evacuating all day, i was watching streams with roads bumper to bumper at 8am today
