With its enormous strength, even experienced experts classified Hurricane Milton as a very rare threat. In fact, the enormous storm leaves a path of destruction behind.
Warm water fueled surprisingly rapid intensification, transforming Milton from a minimal hurricane to a powerful Category 5 hurricane in less than 10 hours. It weakened but quickly recovered, and when its winds briefly reached 180 mph, its barometric pressure, an important measure of a storm’s overall strength, was among the lowest recorded in the Gulf of Mexico at this late stage of the year year were measured.
At its strongest, Milton has almost fully exhausted its potential intensity given the weather factors surrounding it.
Phil Klotzbach, a hurricane researcher at Colorado State University, said: “Milton had everything you want from a storm that gets completely out of hand.
And that’s not all. Milton’s path eastward through the Gulf is so rare that the last comparable storm occurred in 1848. Tampa – the most populous urban area where Milton headed – hasn’t been directly hit by a major storm in more than 100 years, making this week a worst-case scenario for many experts
