Zoë Schlanger: “As Hurricane Milton exploded from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm over the course of 12 hours yesterday, climate scientists and meteorologists were stunned. NBC6’s John Morales, a veteran TV meteorologist in South Florida, choked up on air while describing how quickly and dramatically the storm had intensified. To most people, a drop in pressure of 50 millibars means nothing; a weatherman understands, as Morales said mid-broadcast, that ‘this is just horrific.’ Florida is still cleaning up from Helene; this storm is spinning much faster, and it’s more compact and organized.
“In a way, Milton is exactly the type of storm that scientists have been warning could happen; Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, called it shocking but not surprising. ‘One of the things we know is that, in a warmer world, the most intense storms are more intense,’ he told me. Milton might have been a significant hurricane regardless, but every aspect of the storm that could have been dialed up has been.
“A hurricane forms from multiple variables, and in Milton, the variables have come together to form a nightmare. The storm is gaining considerable energy thanks to high sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which is far hotter than usual. And that energy translates into higher wind speeds. Milton is also taking up moisture from the very humid atmosphere, which, as a rule, can hold 7 percent more water vapor for every degree-Celsius increase in temperature. Plus, the air is highly unstable and can therefore rise more easily, which allows the hurricane to form and maintain its shape. And thanks to La Niña, there isn’t much wind shear—the wind’s speed and direction are fairly uniform at different elevations—‘so the storm can stay nice and vertically stacked,’ Kim Wood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona, told me. ‘All of that combined is making the storm more efficient at using the energy available.’ In other words, the storm very efficiently became a major danger …”
“Milton is also a very compact storm with a highly symmetrical, circular core, Wood said. In contrast, Helene’s core took longer to coalesce, and the storm stayed more spread out. Wind speeds inside Milton picked up by about 90 miles an hour in a single day, intensifying faster than any other storm on record besides Hurricanes Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007. Climate scientists have worried for a while now that climate change could produce storms that intensify faster and reach higher peak intensities, given an extra boost by climate change. Milton is doing just that.”
It’s going to weaken due to a second storm forming on Florida’s east coast.
AdBig5700 on
What? Scientists have been warning us that these storms would ramp up in intensity? Since when? I watch Fox News all the time and it’s the first I’m hearing about it! /s
3 Comments
Zoë Schlanger: “As Hurricane Milton exploded from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 storm over the course of 12 hours yesterday, climate scientists and meteorologists were stunned. NBC6’s John Morales, a veteran TV meteorologist in South Florida, choked up on air while describing how quickly and dramatically the storm had intensified. To most people, a drop in pressure of 50 millibars means nothing; a weatherman understands, as Morales said mid-broadcast, that ‘this is just horrific.’ Florida is still cleaning up from Helene; this storm is spinning much faster, and it’s more compact and organized.
“In a way, Milton is exactly the type of storm that scientists have been warning could happen; Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, called it shocking but not surprising. ‘One of the things we know is that, in a warmer world, the most intense storms are more intense,’ he told me. Milton might have been a significant hurricane regardless, but every aspect of the storm that could have been dialed up has been.
“A hurricane forms from multiple variables, and in Milton, the variables have come together to form a nightmare. The storm is gaining considerable energy thanks to high sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which is far hotter than usual. And that energy translates into higher wind speeds. Milton is also taking up moisture from the very humid atmosphere, which, as a rule, can hold 7 percent more water vapor for every degree-Celsius increase in temperature. Plus, the air is highly unstable and can therefore rise more easily, which allows the hurricane to form and maintain its shape. And thanks to La Niña, there isn’t much wind shear—the wind’s speed and direction are fairly uniform at different elevations—‘so the storm can stay nice and vertically stacked,’ Kim Wood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona, told me. ‘All of that combined is making the storm more efficient at using the energy available.’ In other words, the storm very efficiently became a major danger …”
“Milton is also a very compact storm with a highly symmetrical, circular core, Wood said. In contrast, Helene’s core took longer to coalesce, and the storm stayed more spread out. Wind speeds inside Milton picked up by about 90 miles an hour in a single day, intensifying faster than any other storm on record besides Hurricanes Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007. Climate scientists have worried for a while now that climate change could produce storms that intensify faster and reach higher peak intensities, given an extra boost by climate change. Milton is doing just that.”
Read more here: [https://theatln.tc/kyWsw7AN](https://theatln.tc/kyWsw7AN)
It’s going to weaken due to a second storm forming on Florida’s east coast.
What? Scientists have been warning us that these storms would ramp up in intensity? Since when? I watch Fox News all the time and it’s the first I’m hearing about it! /s