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Hurricane Hurricane Milton

wx_guy said:
Perhaps promising, I haven't heard of any truly devastating damage apart from the tornado damage from yesterday. Maybe that trend continues.
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Fingers very much crossed. The outages are horrendous though, approaching 3.5 million customers.
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Likely that there was significant surge, but the west coast lacks many obs sites. Absolutely insane amounts of sand buildup in some areas, such as in Venice, FL.

 
From the footage I've seen it looks like Manasota Key took the worst of the surge last night. Not quite Ian, level, but pretty close to Helene surge around Horseshoe Beach. Several homes washed away completely, many other destroyed. Not total devastation, but pretty bad.

Ft. Myers Beach appears to have escaped catastrophic surge (and anything that could have been destroyed was already deleted by Ian).

Venice damage is pretty bad, but not catastrophic.

Punta Gorda has extensive damage but again, nothing that appears catastrophic.

Haven't seen anything from Sanibel or Siesta Key. I imagine they have some pretty significant damange.
 
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Found this off of Space.com. This storm has given us such a ride from becoming the first sub-900mb storm since 2005 to its' destruction in Florida. I hope all who were impacted by Milton are well and recover swiftly.
 
Surge was at least 10 feet in some areas last night; will take some time to figure out what kind of damage it's done. Ironically, some of the nastiest winds I've seen have come from inland and the east coast.

 
lake.effect said:
^Florida really got lucky with the last-minute deterioration of Milton. It was bad, and affected a lot of people, but not catastrophic.
Helene will likely go down as (by far) the most impactful hurricane of 2024.
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No surge did surge things and destroyed most of what it touched in places like manasota key. Doesn’t look like a complete wipe out but its still very bad destruction.
 
Some of the tornadoes look to have flattened certain stilt homes…and yanked metal buildings into twisted heaps. Pretty bad tree damage too. This is all from helicopter footage I don’t know which specific tornadoes they were.
 
Honestly, in retrospective analyses I think Milton will mostly be remembered for its rapid intensification in the Gulf and the tornado outbreak it spawned. Obviously the straight line wind, surge and flash flood damage has been terrible for a lot of folks, no doubt. Thankfully though, those impacts were not as widespread and catastrophic as they could have been, especially if Milton had made landfall at a higher intensity. On the other hand, seeing a tropical cyclone just EXPLODE into a category 5 storm and subsequently spawn a lengthy and Plains-esque classic supercell tornado outbreak are quite the anomalies.
 
Definitely an IMBY post here and every storm has different impacts in different places but Milton is going to rank just above Frances (2004) in my personal experience rankings, and Frances is dead last on my list of storms in which I have been within 50 miles of the eye wall. Just completed a drive to/from my sisters place in Geneva and mostly branches down, very few trees, and mostly water where it’s supposed to be, very little structure flooding (comparing both of these to Ian).

My personal list still has Irma at the top, followed by Charley, Ian, Erin, Jeanne, Nicole, then Milton, and finally Frances. Other folks personal experiences may differ.
 
TH2002 said:
Honestly, in retrospective analyses I think Milton will mostly be remembered for its rapid intensification in the Gulf and the tornado outbreak it spawned. Obviously the straight line wind, surge and flash flood damage has been terrible for a lot of folks, no doubt. Thankfully though, those impacts were not as widespread and catastrophic as they could have been, especially if Milton had made landfall at a higher intensity. On the other hand, seeing a tropical cyclone just EXPLODE into a category 5 storm and subsequently spawn a lengthy and Plains-esque classic supercell tornado outbreak are quite the anomalies.
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Overall he basically stayed with the forecast as he made landfall. so kudos to NHC for that. The strong, potentially violent, tornado damage from SE Florida may end up being the most intense structural damage from the event overall, not-so-eagerly waiting to see more comprehensive damage analysis from those storms.
 
No matter what damage is learned about today, we got lucky. Straight up. The perfect east turn to make a South of Tampa landfall, the hybrid tropical/extratropical transition, a weakening storm on approach so not as good at translating winds to the surface, landfall before high tide. Environmentally, there were a lot of things that went goldilocks for us humans this time, because as strong as Milton was near the Yucatan, I thought we were in a lot bigger trouble. The tornadoes were certainly an unexpected curve ball - I expect Milton will help us understand new dynamics of air that dry interacting with a tropical system. The sting jet was neat, as was being able to see the decoupling on radar too. Lots to weather nerd about.
 
Blountwolf said:
No matter what damage is learned about today, we got lucky. Straight up. The perfect east turn to make a South of Tampa landfall, the hybrid tropical/extratropical transition, a weakening storm on approach so not as good at translating winds to the surface, landfall before high tide. Environmentally, there were a lot of things that went goldilocks for us humans this time, because as strong as Milton was near the Yucatan, I thought we were in a lot bigger trouble. The tornadoes were certainly an unexpected curve ball - I expect Milton will help us understand new dynamics of air that dry interacting with a tropical system. The sting jet was neat, as was being able to see the decoupling on radar too. Lots to weather nerd about.
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I think the eastward turn played a part in limiting the surge as much as possible (although I'm pretty sure >10ft was still recorded in some places). I think when this event is looked back upon, the tornadoes might be talked about more than the actual hurricane. Still plenty of flooding in the Tampa Bay area, but this was almost best case scenario for a record breaking hurricane.

From a public communication standpoint, I'm afraid the underperformance of this event relative to the dire messaging sent to Tampa Bay residents might cause a sort of indifferent approach residents may have to the next hurricane to impact this area.
 
TornadoFan17 said:
I think the eastward turn played a part in limiting the surge as much as possible (although I'm pretty sure >10ft was still recorded in some places). I think when this event is looked back upon, the tornadoes might be talked about more than the actual hurricane. Still plenty of flooding in the Tampa Bay area, but this was almost best case scenario for a record breaking hurricane.

From a public communication standpoint, I'm afraid the underperformance of this event relative to the dire messaging sent to Tampa Bay residents might cause a sort of indifferent approach residents may have to the next hurricane to impact this area.
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To be fair, we were all worried about complacency given that Tampa hasn't had too many majors in its history. How to balance threat comms remains a confound that I'm not sure we will ever truly figure out, and at a certain point people have to take some personal responsibility when it comes to actually paying attention. I do think continuing to remind people that forecasts are flexible remains important, because there's still way too many folks I know who think a forecast is going to be perfect and set in stone.
 
Clancy said:
To be fair, we were all worried about complacency given that Tampa hasn't had too many majors in its history. How to balance threat comms remains a confound that I'm not sure we will ever truly figure out, and at a certain point people have to take some personal responsibility when it comes to actually paying attention. I do think continuing to remind people that forecasts are flexible remains important, because there's still way too many folks I know who think a forecast is going to be perfect and set in stone.
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The public communication aspect is really important to me. I am getting a communications minor on my way to completion of my meteorology degree. I completely understand and agree that with the public you are "damned if you do, damned if you don't," but I'd love to figure out a better way to streamline real time tracking updates to the general public. I'm just unsure of a better way to do it currently.

It will never be perfect. Nobody will ever be 100% happy. I think the NHC did a great job with this event.
 
What the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season has shown us is that we've got to move away from the expected total numbers. I didn't use to see it that way, but I do now. Hits and impact wise has verified this season. The public runs towards the total numbers and expects that. We all do. You saw everyone throw their arms up and say this season is a Forecasted Convective Amplification Deficiency after we moved into the unfavorable MJO phases after Ernesto. I tried my best on here to get the point across that this season ain't over, but frankly, got shot down as to the main reason why it got inactive for a time. I'm already looking at doing a more probabilistic approach going forward for seasonal forecast instead of the whole numbers (Guilty as charged with going overboard on the total numbers this season). Funny thing is we've stayed in Neutral ENSO all season long and a spreadsheet I did up showed the Gulf coast states have more impacts during ENSO Neutral than La Nina.

Steps off soapbox
 
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