Hurricane Milton Live Updates: Death Toll Climbs as Florida Assesses Storm Damage

Here’s a look at five things that stood out this week.

One key part of the very first forecast was incredibly accurate.

Forecasters at the National Hurricane Center had one key piece of Milton’s puzzle correct at the start. When they issued their first forecast last Saturday, the anticipated path aligned almost precisely with where Milton ended up making landfall in Siesta Key, Fla. Historically, four days before landfall, the average error for a storm’s path is about 150 miles.

Over the next few days, the forecast path would nudge north and south, leaving residents fearful of vastly different potential impacts as the storm wobbled. People in Tampa, especially, grew increasingly worried about a worst-case scenario landfall north of Tampa Bay at high tide, which would have delivered a historically destructive storm surge.

Milton quickly became one of the strongest storms ever.

Forecasters did not have Milton’s intensity right on that first go, and they assumed the storm would be a strong Category 2 at landfall. But they started dialing in on the possibility of a major hurricane, a 3 or higher, a few hours later. And that is exactly what happened: From Sunday to Monday, Milton grew from a tropical storm to one of the strongest storms ever in the Gulf of Mexico.

By 8 p.m. on Monday, its wind speeds had increased to 180 miles per hour. Based on wind speed, it joined a handful of other hurricanes that rivaled the strongest Atlantic storm ever recorded: a 1980 hurricane named Allen, which had a peak wind speed of 190 m.p.h. before it made landfall along the United States-Mexico border.

Another way to measure a storm’s strength is by how low the pressure becomes inside it. As hurricane hunter aircraft moved through Milton’s pinhole eye on Monday evening, they recorded a near-record low pressure of 897 millibars, joining only five other Atlantic hurricanes to dip below 900 millibars: Allen, Rita, the Labor Day storm of 1935, Gilbert in 1988 and Wilma.

The intensity and strength of the storm at this point only heightened the anxiety along the coast and among meteorologists. On Monday, one of Florida’s most veteran meteorologists choked up on air in a video that went viral, as he feared what that dropping millibar reading would mean if the storm were to come ashore at that intensity.

But it did not. An eyewall replacement cycle forced the storm to weaken, as most Category 5 storms do, when a new wall of thunderstorms begins to form around the smaller inner eyewall, choking out its moisture source and creating a much larger eye of the hurricane. The resulting hurricane, larger but weaker, can bring the potential for damage to occur over a more widespread area with landfall.

Milton continued to chart its own course through the Gulf: Its evolution was short-lived, and on Tuesday, Milton became a Category 5 again, this time at its new larger size. It had become a catastrophic-looking monster, with an eye large and clear enough that you could see the ocean below.

Even as forecasters believed the storm would weaken again, which it did, emergency managers and other officials across the state had to prepare for the worst-case scenario that it would not.

Hurricanes produce tornadoes, but this was “quite a day.”

As the storm inched closer to land, meteorologists continued to forecast that it would lose its intensity, but that its hazards would still be intense. What surprised them on Wednesday, as the far outer bands began sweeping across the Florida peninsula, were the damaging and deadly tornadoes that tore long tracks through the state.

It’s not unusual for tornadoes to precede a storm’s landfall, but they are usually weak and short-lived. Those accompanying Milton were more intense — “a little out of the ordinary,” said Bill Bunting, with the Storm Prediction Center. The National Weather Service issued more than 100 tornado warnings on Wednesday, and trained spotters reported at least 38 tornado sightings.

More than 100 structures were damaged before Milton came ashore on Wednesday, and local officials said at least five people were dead after a tornado moved through St. Lucie County, on the other side of the state from the Gulf Coast.

Milton became unbalanced just before landfall.

As night approached and Milton tracked closer to shore, it turned practically lopsided, with all the heavy rain on the northern side of the storm. An interaction with cooler and drier air steered the storm to the northeast, into Sarasota, which is why the storm weakened to a Category 3 hurricane at landfall, and spread its wind radius even farther out.

Despite the unbalanced look on weather satellite and radar, the winds were strong on both sides of the eye. To the south, a storm surge raged ashore, while in Tampa Bay, the winds pushed the water out for a brief period, creating a reverse surge. Had it not become unbalanced, the storm might have been able to carry its strength a while longer, and the effects could have been even more destructive.

The storm’s new shape affected who got the most rain.

Total precipitation accumulation

Wednesday through Thursday

The storm’s asymmetrical nature kept the excessive rainfall north of the center, running a path right along Interstate 4, drenching St. Petersburg, Tampa and Orlando. Up to 18 inches of rain fell during the storm in some places.

This shape, with an eroding southern section of the storm, wasn’t surprising. It’s almost precisely what happened with Helene two weeks ago, as that storm interacted with a more turbulent air mass and shifted the rain to the northern edge.

The back-to-back nature of these two destructive storms has left Florida residents fatigued, but forecasters were not surprised. A lot of this year could have looked like this, based on their earlier predictions that this season would be overly active. But a lull late in the summer had many wondering if those predictions were wrong. The past few weeks have proved otherwise: In addition to Helene and Milton, four other storms have formed and gone, with three of them reaching hurricane strength.

The hurricane season is now statistically above-average, especially in the number of hurricanes (nine) and major hurricanes (four). And now forecasters are worried that it isn’t over yet, with some suggesting it could even stretch into December, well after the official end of hurricane season on Nov. 30.