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Hurricane Milton – the latest tropical nuisance to threaten the continental United States – underwent rapid intensification on Monday to become a monster category five hurricane.
The storm has drawn a bead on the west coast of Florida, where officials were still scrambling to clear debris following Hurricane Helene – a category four storm which made landfall along the Sunshine State’s Big Bend on September 26, 2024.
As of 11:10 a.m. CDT, Milton was located at latitude 21.7° N longitude 91.6° W – or approximately 715 miles southwest of Tampa, according to forecasters with the National Hurricane Center (NHC) in Miami, Florida. The system was moving east-southeast at nine miles per hour.
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Milton’s maximum sustained winds were clocked at a staggering 160 miles per hour – but gusts as high as 190 miles per hour were recorded. That makes Milton a category five system on the Saffir-Simpson wind scale – the highest possible category.
In discussing the level of devastation such as system brings, NHC forecasters noted “a high percentage of framed homes will be destroyed, with total roof failure and wall collapse.”
“Fallen trees and power poles will isolate residential areas,” the warning continued. “Power outages will last for weeks to possibly months. Most of the area will be uninhabitable for weeks or months.”
Here is a look at the system as it approached category five status…
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Milton strengthened from a tropical storm with maximum sustained winds of 65 miles per hour to a category five storm in just over 24 hours – one of the fastest intensifications ever recorded. In the space of a little more than one day, the storm doubled (and nearly tripled) in strength.
Fueling Milton’s rapid intensification? A steady drop in the storm’s central pressure. Twenty-four hours ago, this key intensity metric measured 991 millibars. As of the latest reading, Milton’s central pressure had dropped all the way down to 925 millibars.
Where is the storm going?
“Milton is forecast to move near or just north of the Yucatan Peninsula today and Tuesday, then cross the eastern Gulf of Mexico and approach the west coast of the Florida Peninsula by Wednesday,” forecasters noted.
The only good news? Compared to Helene, Milton is (for the moment) a much more compact storm. Hurricane-force winds extend outward just 30 miles from its center while tropical storm force winds extend outward only eighty miles. That’s less than a third the size of Helene’s wind field upon her landfall.
Count on this media outlet to provide additional coverage of this category five monster as it traverses the Gulf of Mexico and approaches the Florida coast on Wednesday…
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR…
Will Folks is the owner and founding editor of FITSNews. Prior to founding his own news outlet, he served as press secretary to the governor of South Carolina, bass guitarist in an alternative rock band and bouncer at a Columbia, S.C. dive bar. He lives in the Midlands region of the state with his wife and eight children.
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8 comments
Remember not too long ago when FitsNews had a blog post about how this year’s hurricanes forecast is a dud and over-hyped?
Just add it to the long list of things FitsNews continues to be wrong about.
At least I’m consistent!
“A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds.” Emerson. (Be it weather or politics)
Just got an email from Milton F. Yoo. He is the Chinese scientist who runs the Soros-funded Democratic weather machine. He says that Clearwater, Tampa, St. Pete are largely Republican so they can expect a direct hit. Orlando is more Democratic so he hopes he can nudge the storm path a little to the north of there. The Villages are more Republican but have seen a surprising number of Harris supporters, so he is hoping we can keep it in between Orlando and the Villages, but its not an exact science yet. Jacksonville has been trending blue so will try to keep it south of there before it exits into the Atlantic.
Stay on your toes everyone.
It’s been well documented that Mother Nature and reality have a Democrat bias.
Fucking science and facts!!!!???
God must be punishing Florida for all the anti-gay, anti-trans stuff.
You fucking liberals are nothing but lying assholes
As with all MAGA accusation is always projection. Trump accuses other people of things he has done. It’s like denying he has had 7 phone calls with Putin since he left office or that he sent COVID tests to Putin when Americans needed them. Unfortunately, the Kremlin says its all true. Putin, supports Trump and Trump is in Putin’s pocket. The Russia, Russia, Russia is not fake and Trump did not win in 2020, and Trump is the only President to ever deny FEMA resources to a state because of whose party the state governor was in.