Hurricane Milton:
Facebook took my weather page down; so, I'm going to try and see if people will follow me to here.
Milton is the thirteenth named storm of the
Atlantic 2024 hurricane season. He is the ninth hurricane and fourth major
hurricane of the season; he is also the second Category 5 hurricane of the Atlantic
hurricane season.
He was a tropical storm with max sustained winds of 60 mph,
along with a central pressure of 991mb, at 8:00 am EDT on Sunday October 6th. During Sunday afternoon the Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance
found that Milton was producing hurricane-force winds, so the National
Hurricane Center upgraded tropical storm Milton to a Category 1 hurricane. From
here Milton underwent explosive intensification becoming a Category 5 hurricane
with max sustained winds of 160 mph on October 7 at 11:55 am EDT. Milton went
from a category one to a category 5 in just 18 hours. This level of astonishing
rapid intensification is almost unheard of. Only hurricane Wilma intensified faster,
doing the same thing in only 12 hours back in 2005.
At the 7:00 pm Monday evening update, Milton had Maximum sustained
winds of 180 mph, at one point this evening reconnaissance aircraft found the
min pressure was down to 887mb; since then, at the 10:00 pm CDT update his max
winds were down to 165 mph with a central pressure of 914 mph.
Hurricane Milton is in an environment of light shear and SST of 86°F with very high oceanic heat content, it looks like Milton will remain in this very favorable environment for the next 24 hours.
It does look like Milton is in the process of undergoing an eyewall replacement cycle; this is the reason for the slight decrease in max sustained winds and central pressure up a bit. During an eyewall replacement cycle, the eyewall will dissipate, and a new larger one develops. The hurricane also increases in overall size. Typically, after the weakening, the hurricane usually sees the winds pick back up and the pressure start to drop again. So, it is possible Hurricane Milton will strengthen back to a very strong category five hurricane by tomorrow.
On Wednesday a cold front dropping into the northern Gulf, should interact with Milton. This will allow for an increase in windshear and will also likely allow for a chance for dry air to become ingested into Milton. If this does occur, it should weaken Milton to a Category four or even a category three hurricane before landfalling somewhere near Tampa Bay. Because of the increase in overall size, there will be a higher destructive storm surge along parts of the west coast of Florida on Wednesday. Milton looks to make landfall late Wednesday and into Thursday morning. Milton will bring a lot of Rainfall, a large part of Florida looks to see a 5-10 inches of rain with some areas of the state seeing over 15 inches. This will lead to widespread Flash Flooding.
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