by Michael Snyder, The Economic Collapse Blog:
The worst-case scenario that many meteorologists were fearing is here. Hurricane Milton will make landfall on the west coast of Florida very early on Thursday morning, and it will do so as a much larger storm than originally anticipated. As you will see below, the size of Hurricane Milton’s wind field has more than doubled since Tuesday afternoon. That means that this storm will do catastrophic damage over a much wider area than the experts originally thought. At this point, some scientists are warning that the total damage from Hurricane Milton could potentially exceed the total damage that we witnessed during Hurricane Katrina.
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This has been such a strange storm.
According to CBS News, Hurricane Milton “is the quickest storm on record to rapidly intensify into a Category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico”…
Milton is the quickest storm on record to rapidly intensify into a Category 5 in the Gulf of Mexico, Nolan said. On Sunday, the system was a tropical storm with sustained winds of 60 miles per hour. Just 24 hours later, its wind speeds had leapt to 175 miles per hour, far above the Category 5 threshold of 157 mph.
Of course wind speed is only one part of the equation.
The size of the wind field is also an exceedingly important factor, and as I discussed above, Milton’s wind field has more than doubled since Tuesday afternoon…
Milton is a powerful hurricane, and its wind field is growing, according to the latest data from the National Hurricane Center.
Milton’s tropical storm-force winds now extend 250 miles from its center, especially on its northern side. These same winds extended 105 miles from its center early Tuesday afternoon.
Its wind field could grow further ahead of and after landfall, bringing damaging winds to much of the Florida Peninsula. Tropical storm-force wind gusts have already been observed along parts of the state’s west coast from north of the Tampa Bay area through the Keys.
We have never seen anything quite like this before.
Milton is producing a jaw-dropping symphony of lightning bolts that literally never stops, and it has already spawned numerous tornadoes on the Florida peninsula…
“Historic, catastrophic, life-threatening – all those words summarize the situation,” said Austen Flannery, a forecaster with the National Weather Service in Tampa.
Tornadic supercells − dangerous, rotating thunderstorms that can produce tornadoes − were beginning to sweep across the Florida peninsula, the update said. More than 12 million people were under tornado warnings, and the National Weather Service in Miami said on social media it had “up to 4 visually confirmed tornadoes today,” with unofficial reports of others.
A lot of people in south Florida thought that they would not get hit hard by this storm, but a tornado spawned by Milton literally crossed I-75 earlier today…
As Florida’s Gulf Coast braces for the impacts of Hurricane Milton Wednesday, the storm is causing severe weather across the state — even in Miami.
The National Weather Service Miami shared photos of a tornado crossing Interstate 75 Wednesday as cars were still driving on the highway.
“TORNADO crossing I-75 as we speak! Seek shelter NOW!” the agency wrote on social media.
I feel like I have been watching footage from a Hollywood disaster movie.
In Fort Myers, a tornado spawned by Hurricane Milton absolutely ripped a 7-Eleven convenience store to shreds…
Hurricane Milton has already spawned tornadoes in Florida hours before its projected landfall, and the city of Fort Myers was pummeled by one.
Video and photos show damaged houses, fallen trees and a mangled 7-Eleven gas station. A piece of the 7-Eleven’s canopy went airborne and ended up wrapped around the bottom of a tree.
When it finally makes landfall, it is being projected that Milton will be either a Category 3 or a Category 4 storm.
But on AccuWeather’s RealImpact Scale for Hurricanes, it will be considered a Category 5 storm because of the potential devastation that it could cause…
“On Wednesday, as Milton encounters some wind shear and another eyewall replacement cycle, it is forecast to expand in size and lose some wind intensity,” DaSilva added, Milton will make landfall as a formidable Category 3-4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale late Wednesday evening,” DaSilva added.
However, hurricane experts continue to maintain that Milton will strike with the impacts of a 5 on AccuWeather’s RealImpact™ Scale for Hurricanes, which takes into account storm surge, flooding rainfall, population affected and economic impacts above and beyond the Saffir-Simpson scale, which takes into account only maximum sustained winds.
The damage from this storm is going to ultimately affect all of us.
According to CNN, approximately 3 percent of U.S. GDP is directly in the path of this storm…
Hurricane Milton’s projected devastation in Florida could have a ripple effect on the broader US economy — impacting jobs, travel, manufacturing, retail sales, housing and other factors.
About 3% of America’s gross domestic product — the broadest measure of the US economy — is directly in Milton’s path, according to Ryan Sweet, chief US economist for Oxford Economics.
As I discussed yesterday, it is being projected that in a worst-case scenario this storm could potentially cause up to 175 billion dollars in economic damage.
Interestingly, Hurricane Milton is heading directly toward one of Pfizer’s most important facilities. The following was posted by Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla on Tuesday…
Like many people, I have watched with a heavy heart as the scale of the damage caused by Hurricane Helene has become fully evident. Now it seems Hurricane Milton is heading toward the Tampa area, where we have a major @Pfizer facility.
As always at Pfizer, we stand with our colleagues, their families, and the communities facing these immense challenges. We are committed to doing everything we can to provide support during this difficult time.
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