Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 hurricane late Monday morning.
Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.
Milton now ranks as the third-greatest 24-hour wind speed intensification for a hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. (Records are based on data since the satellite era began in the 1960s.)
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This storm has reached 180mph at its peak. Have you ever braced wind at that speed? I’ve ridden at 120mph on my motorcycle (at a drag strip). The wind, even with a full face helmet and visor, was so extreme that it was hard to hold on and my ears were ringing afterward despite having earplugs in. This insanity corresponds to a few seconds of a category 3 hurricane. This hurricane’s winds are like that felt by squids on literbikes doing top speed runs.
To add to what you’ve said: if you’ve ever hit a bug (or anything else) at those speeds you notice it. A junebug will leave a fairly decent bruise on exposed skin, and for comparison a paintball out of a marker travels about 190 mph.
Imagine the random far more substantial debris flying around during a hurricane near those speeds.
…i’ve done a buck fourty-five in my convertible with the top down: it’s LOUD…at one fifty-five, pushing with all two hundred horsepower, my car can’t make any further headway against the wind and buildings are a lot less aerodynamically efficient…
…i’ve ridden out a half-dozen hurricanes but category fives are get-out-of-town devastating…
Yeah, I def prefer octopuses on gallonbikes, imperial cephalopods with 8 arms only FTW!
Surely climate change had nothing to do with this!
Doesn’t matter, as long as companies like BP, Chevron, et al can keep extracting that value! They would personally strangle your grandma if they thought it would make them more money.
Cat 5 don’t fuck around.
Good luck Florida.
Good thing DeSantis won’t pick up the phone from Biden or Harris to start funding relief.
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Lol how does this garbage article get 30 upvotes? “An aide told me he refuses to take the call. Definitely.”
My wife was talking about it today. I kind of grunted and said that sounded about right for Desantis. Weird little evil fucker.
No clue if it’s true. Sounds true.
Please let me know if someone posts something credible.
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I’m not the one making an assertion. I don’t have to prove a negative.
The person making a claim is responsible for providing evidence.
Name calling is not acceptable. I expect better from you in future conversations.
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Your assertion is that Biden has not tried to contact DeSantis to offer help. You were provided with an article that says otherwise and dismissed it as false. What evidence do you hand that supports your claim that Biden has not attempted to contact DeSantis? Other Republican governors have said that Biden was quick to reach out in regards to Helene, so it’s hard to believe that he hasn’t tried to contact Florida.
You prefer Kamala Harris to say it directly?
Ohh shit.
So how much overlap is there with the previous Helene path?
The panhandle is getting a lot of rain, but there is a lot of overlap with Ian’s path… namely our house :/
Little, this is going to hit Florida directly (moving east from the gulf) and then go into the Atlantic. It won’t make it into the rest of the country, fortunately.
Unless it does one of those classic 180s where it swings back around and hits the atlantic
A lot of overlap from the flooding, more wind from Milton. I know a few people who have had to gut their houses already from Helene and expect it to flood again this week.
For direct path on landfall, probably none unless it turns northwards. But the west coast of florida just ate the rain, storm surge and wind from Helene and will now get the full brunt of Milton.
Minimal. Helene went north, and really only hit the pan handle area, Milton is going East and is going to pass through the middle of Florida.
At least mid Florida is mostly higher elevation for dealing with the storm surge. The winds will be brutal.
Even though it was like 100 miles off shore, the Tampa Bay area had an 8 foot storm surge with Helene that killed 12 people and ruined tens of thousands of homes and businesses. There are piles of debris everywhere along the coast that are going to become projectiles in hurricane force winds of they can’t be picked up in time. Almost the entire western coast of Florida saw significant impact from Helene
That’s still probably better than if there was debris from a direct hit.
Well yes, two direct hits would be worse. Was just saying Helene had a pretty severe impact on the areas that are going to be hit directly this time
One of the things I’m wondering about is whether Helene chopped up the water and caused some overturning/cooling that may lower surface temps.
And if it did (or did so to a meaningful degree), is that helping to temper Milton before it makes landfall?
And I guess I’m commenting here because you seemed so confident. (Maybe you’re just making it up as you go along, too. Who knows?!)
That’s probably why everyone is super split on the landfall category of the hurricane.
That should play an impact and overcast and heavy rain should make for a less welcoming Florida.
However we have seen that shallower waters by the coast have been very very hot lately and do a lot to bump up hurricanes as they near the shallows and it could intensify the storm again as it nears land.
Tampa doesn’t get hit directly by storms and they don’t generally form to category 5 hurricanes in about 12 hours in the gulf of Mexico so there is a lot of new science and prediction work to be done here so it’s a lot of guessing till it does.
What. The. Fuck.
I’m watching the live stream from WFLA, which is a St. Petersburg station. He’s a photo of a bridge leaving the area right now (just after noon on Tuesday Florida time.)
Either most people with cars have evacuated or there are a lot of people who may learn the last lesson of their lives. I hope the former.
Also, the eye apparently will pass right over Cape Canaveral.
They’ve been evacuating all day, i was watching streams with roads bumper to bumper at 8am today
We’re supposed to go to Tampa this weekend for a tattoo. In the grand scheme of things I know, we’ve got very little to worry about, but I am wondering if we should just cancel now, or if there’s a chance of Tampa being back online by Friday.
If it’s only for a tattoo, maybe post pone it? Are you driving there? Only asking cuz plane ticket cancellation vs driving is different cost wise if you can’t get a refund. I guess it wouldn’t hurt to call the place and ask them what they think is appropriate.
We have flights and hotel booked. It’s my husband’s appointment, I’m just there to show him memes and distract him. He’s going to ask the guy today.
Did everything turn out okay?
Aww thanks for checking in! We ended up cancelling last minute and booking a random flight in the opposite direction, to Omaha NE. We’d never been and it seemed like a good time. I ended up getting a duck butt tattoo, and we rescheduled his. His appt just happened and he was good all 5 hours of it!
We also explored the coast a little and got to see the devastation first hand, houses completely wrecked, timber everywhere, whole neighborhoods ruined. Got some cool shark teeth tho!
I’m glad to hear it all worked out Lenny! (Duck butt tattoo as in a duck’s butt?) You should turn the shark teeth into jewellery of some sort haha
Yep, imagine a duck digging in a pond with its butt in the air… that. Hahah.
Probably not.
Even though Tanya Marunchak’s Belleair Beach home was flooded with more than 4 feet (1.2 meters) of water from Helene, she and her husband were unsure Monday morning if they should evacuate. She wanted to leave, but her husband thought their three-story home was sturdy enough to withstand Milton.
That poor woman. If her husband thinks he’s safe in their “sturdy” home, she should leave him behind.
Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.
Someone had a word quota to fill.
Probably submitted the article with 1.1 line spacing and 13 point font
At least the insurance companies will only have to rebuild some houses once after 2 hurricanes
Many insurance companies won’t even insure homes in much of Florida.
And the rest are probably planning to.
Insurance companies don’t build shit. They just collect money from people, and sometimes give some of it back.
Begrudgingly cover*
unless they can find a way to screw you over for profit, then they absolutely will no matter how ridiculous the “reasoning”*
I believe it was Katrina where the insurance said it was wind damage when you only had flood insurance, but if you’re neighbor only had wind coverage they’d tell them it was water damage.
Right storm. Wrong details.
They (insurance companies) were claiming it as flood/surge damage, even if wind ripped off your roof to let the water inside. Wind was covered, water wasn’t. Companies were sued for trying to blanket deny an area based on one generic engineering report, or denying coverage if flood waters came through after wind destroyed a place. Insurance com0anies don’t typically offer flood insurance to a lot of places and if homeowners want it, they have to buy it through the federal government.
They’re actually required to give 85% of everything back, so they give back most of it. It seems like Florida is becoming too much of a hassle to insure, though. Some companies have pulled out of florida.
Everyone in FL should have pulled out.
This joke works on multiple levels and I’m happy about that.
Holy shit a triple entendre!
Does that 85% include their costs or is that the full amount returned to policy holders?
Full amount that is legally required to pay back out in insurer coverage every year. The other 15% covers pay roll, rent, buildings, bonus’, overhead, etc. Literally everything else. Same deal for medical insurance.
What insurance companies? They all backed out of Florida years ago. Now it’s state funded home insurance footing the bill.
I read a thing recently that insurance companies are getting increasingly skittish all over the country, even places that wouldn’t traditionally be considered risky, because yay, climate change.
The interesting thing about it was that insurance companies’ insurance is increasingly the thing that’s causing issues, because it’s getting harder for the risk to be spread out. That is to say that insurance companies financially rely on areas with low rates of natural disasters because they end up being a net positive due to insurance premiums and no need for payout. Fewer of these “safe” areas mean the insurance companies struggle to stay solvent and have to rely on their own insurance policies to have their back, but those meta-insurance companies have apparently been historically loud about climate change — probably because besides the government, they’re the ones who have to pony up
Here in Missouri, home owners insurance is starting to lose hail damage from coverage. Damn near 90% of the houses around my area have now replaced their roofs, and have the roofing signage out front. It’s almost a running joke now: guessing which house will be next to get one, and counting the company’s signs to see who’s making a killing.
No problem. The 0ld coots in Florida that vote won’t be around when the bill comes due.
If people don’t have the common sense to not build houses in places that are guaranteed to be destroyed by a natural disaster sooner than later, then I shouldn’t have to subsidize their rebuilding costs through my insurance premiums.
That’s what the people in the North Carolina mountains thought.
That seems like a perfectly reasonable place to build that’s not obviously at threat from hurricanes. But sometimes shit happens that couldn’t be easily foreseen, and THAT’S what insurance is for.
My point, however, is that insurance is NOT to make other policy holders foot the expense of someone repeatedly repairing/rebuilding after completely foreseeable/inevitable events.
To anyone that insists on having a house right on the beach on the Gulf Coast, I say, “Insure thy self.”
Yeah, used to be that insurance costs were almost directly skewed based on risk. But then people were upset that it costed so much to insure some places(the ones that should be prohibitively expensive to insure). And then slowly over time they baked in little increases in price everywhere else to subsidise huge price cuts in those areas to out-compete the companies that put the onus entirely on the people taking risks. Eventually, as it became more and more widespread to do that, it became financially more viable to spread it out rather than have drastically more expensive areas. And now we all have to partially cover people who are taking way more risk than we would.
That’s communism in a nut shell, Republicans should be up in arms over it
Forms of communism that mean they are making more money are actually ok by them. They just have to find a different name to call it so they don’t have to say that icky word that gives them feelings.
That or build something that can stand up to being hit. Tall order, but the inner armchair engineer in me thinks it’s like, totally possible.
I think you forget, building it stronger once would cost 50% more upfront. Better to build it twice, or three times at only 100% cost each time. That way you can be the lowest bidder every time.
If your policy covers wind they claim the damage is from water. If your policy covers water, they claim the damage is from wind. If your policy covers both, they claim a hurricane is exempt as an act of god.
I want to bitch about insurance companies but insurance is for something that is unavoidable.
All this shit is becoming more and more avoidable.
Which, to be fair, is really about all they can do. You CANNOT stop a hurricane from obliterating a house. There is NOTHING the average American can do about it except leave and hope it survives.
Then its dishonest to accept money for your fake business.
they are not real businesses in the insurance sense. its all federal money for flood insurance. they’re just servicers kinda like mortgage originators.
That sounds like capitalistic socialism to me. I dont even understand the notion of what you said there.
this goes into it a bit and is a good listen in general. https://overcast.fm/+AAyIOzvst0E
Good thing they removed climate change from being a thing discussed in the legislature. That should fix things.
They are manipulating the weather! It would be clear as day if there wouldn’t be one hurricane after another.
Where’s the magic sharpie when you need it?
Anyone got a nuke? I have an idea.
I guess nuking Florida before the hurricane gets there would reduce the damage inflicted by the hurricane.
They forgot to make a law against it!
\s
SCOTUS should declare climate change unconstitutional.
This graphic from The Weather Channel is terrifying.
Most tsunamis are less than 10 feet high
https://www.weather.gov/safety/tsunami-about
Cities can’t be protected from this long-term.
Excuse me, is that feet???
I had to do a double take on that.
Terrifyingly, yes it is.
SWEET! Surfs up!
To soon?
No. There’s always a bunch of surfers that go out for hurricane waves. I assume some have a death wish.
Ok, Bodie.
Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote a book called Lucifer’s Hammer about a comet hitting the Earth. There’s a part where all the surfers in the ocean off of L.A. know they’re going to die, so they decide to ride the tsunami and get taken out one by one as they get smashed into buildings.
That would make for a great scene in a disaster movie.
Honestly, the whole book would make a great miniseries. Probably too much for just one movie.
Too bad Larry Niven is and Jerry Pournelle was such right-wing assholes, because their published some great stuff.
One pancake to go!
I think I heard about the book you were talking about
Unfortunately, at least from videos I’ve seen of the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Fukushima tsunami, tsunamis don’t really “break” like good surfing waves and instead seem to act more like a large swell that keeps going instead of ebbing.
(A mega-tsunami from a comet impact might be so large it would act differently, though.)
I’ll be honest, it’s one of the least believable parts of a book which overall reads as quite plausible, but it’s a fun chapter. Neither of the authors are/were scientists, so they were bound to get some things wrong. It was also written almost 50 years ago, so I’m guessing the science they did work with has been supplanted in a lot of ways since then.
You’re surfing all the way to sooner island from Florida‽
Where is sooner island?
before later island
Oklahoma, duh.
Just never heard of it called sooner island
Some “Day After Tomorrow” kinda shit right there
The key says elevation is in meters, so it’s about 3 times less terrifying.
/s
Could be worse… at least it’s not in Meters.
It is in meters and since that an elevation map of Florida, that is the better scenario.
Basically all the areas in purple and dark blue are low enough for the storm surge to flood them. If it was feet, then the blue-green will probably be underwater as well.
The question about ft came right below the elevation map, but it was a top-level comment on the OP and not a sub-comment about the elevation map.
Seems you were confused about this order of comments too but unfortunately you’ve taken downvotes for it.
Yet.
Holy fuck people. It says right in the image that it’s in meters.
So not only lemmings can’t read, a comment asking for info staring you in the face has 55 upvotes… and the wrong answer has 38.
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Well, that’s egg on my face. Thanks for the correction.
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Indents are hard to do well. Maybe impossible? Should be effortless to read but seems to never happen. Maybe just one of those things.
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I’m surprised DeSantis hasn’t required that the storm surge be listed in meters to make it appear smaller and less of an issue.
Meters are communist. He’s dumb enough to require it be listed in leagues.
Use decameters to make the number smaller and less people will understand or care.
Oh shit, those numbers are feet, not inches. That took me a moment. Fuuuuuck.
For those across the pond, 3658mm of rain (12’)
Really sets it in seeing it in mm
Edit: See below comment, I completely misinterpreted the storm surge meaning
No that is storm surge.
So it’s the hurricane pushes that much water onto the shore through force and can get that high of water above sea level.So more akin to a slow tsunami where a hurricane pushes up to 3.6M of water up onto the land then it rains more on top of that. Storm surge is mostly the reason for the houses on pillars too.
I see, thanks for the clarification and bonus tidbit on that!
Florida’s elevation
That image is in meters, so it’s bad, but not quite as bad at first glance.
That’s pretty bad… How is it so flat??
So hurricanes can pass across without losing too much energy.
It is all in the design.
I wasnt trying to deceive, but everything in pink and blue is gonna get fucked.
Headed straight for L Ron Hubbard.
If only we could have foreseen this somehow
Agreed. Maybe we can measure the temperature globally and compare it to past readings. Nevermind, that would be crazy.
That sounds like socialism!
He’s coming for his red stapler. You stole it. Now it is time for revenge.
Milton could put strychnine in the guacamole.
Longer article if you want more info: https://apnews.com/article/hurricane-milton-helene-florida-557c5c512135e0a8661b298e45e17c92
How about boosting the funding for FEMA? Another cluster fuck in the making thanks to the GOP.
Why? If people die because they don’t fund fema and Florida governor don’t take calls from Harris, then they blame it in Biden’s America. The immigrants took all the funding for hurricanes, remember?
Ugh, I hate so many things right now.
Bullshit. Go read the FEMA website about the their funding, especially how the disaster relief and immigrant funding is completely separated. Furthermore, the $750.00 is a Serious Needs Assistance that helps people to buy food, baby formula and the basics.
…no shit.
To be honest this Guarantees Florida goes Red this round when it was getting close to turning back to purple. Tampa and Orlando both vote Blue, and many people will get displaced. Mail will be lost, voting locations will be destroyed, and you can’t just show up to any polling place to vote. “Oh you moved across the state because your house is flooded, well you can vote 350 miles from where you are now, or you can vote by mail, we sent it to your mailbox that doesn’t exist anymore”
That is so incredibly fuuuuuuucked
Yarp, remember Florida took to long in 2000 to get the votes counted when Florida’s supreme Court was turned down by the U.S. supreme Court to allow time to do one final recount as things were off.
They awarded all 25 Florida electorial votes to George Bush, and Gore stepped down to allow it to be a civil process.
If it takes to long to count Desantis only needs one round of Votes to show they were ahead, and stall on placing electors using his election police he created at his side to help the U.S. supreme Court double down on their original ruling 24 years ago
https://www.britannica.com/event/Bush-v-Gore
The count showed Gore won the Vote, would have won the election. Without it, we may have never invaded Iraq.
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/gore-comes-out-swinging-on-iraq/
Since then, Florida has outgrown New York, going from 25 electoral votes to 30. The effects of Florida going 1 way or another is huge
