Comments on: How bad will Hurricane Milton be?

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 18:29:22 +0000

ArtDeco,

My daughter is 2 miles north of Disney in Winter Garden. Current Orlando intensity is strong Cat 1; we’ll see how that updates later today. She’s on a 3rd floor in a very strong building. My big concern is that she parks her car well away from trees. She knows she’s going to be out of power and has planned. She went through many multiday outages in CT in the winter growing up. Much worse there as your house creeps down to the freezing mark.

By: Grandpagrumble

Grandpagrumble — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 17:41:54 +0000

We are hunkering and riding it out in Naples, and praying that folks in Tampa, st. Pete, Bradenton, and Sarasota have taken precautions and will be safe. It’s unbelievable that Harris is playing politics with this.. Thank God we have a governor who is competent and does his job.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 16:48:49 +0000

In this case, even a small shift south could save Tampa. The bay is shallow. If the storm center goes straight in, winds will drive the storm surge into that shallow basin and destroy everything. If it goes slightly south, the winds would be OUT of the bay instead of IN.

By: Art Deco

Art Deco — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 16:02:48 +0000

We have dear friends in the suburbs south of Orlando who move there at the beginning of 2021. The wife tells me the roads out of town are a parking lot, so they’re riding it out. Their daughter and grandson are in their apartment twelve miles away and are riding it out as well. I have a cousin in Melbourne with whom I’m not in regular contact. He’s ridden these out before, so I suspect he’s prepared.

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:45:26 +0000

As Mike says (spaghettimodels.com), a 5 mile shift in center landfall will change where the surge will be worse, but has no change on everything else. Unfortunately the models can’t predict such fine changes.

I was hoping for a 50 mile shift south, good for Tampa, bad for Ft Meyers etc. But model tracks very tight and consistent. Just taking the average of the model tracks show an uncertainty of about 50 miles. A 10 mile shift in the center line is really meaningless.

By: Kate

Kate — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 15:20:19 +0000

physicsguy, I could be wrong, but just looking at the Hurricane Center’s projected track, it looks like the center might hit land just south of Tampa Bay. If so, bad news for Bradenton and Sarasota, but this would limit the massive damage from a direct hit into Tampa Bay.

By: IrishOtter49

IrishOtter49 — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 14:19:13 +0000

sdferr:

Thanks for the explanation/information. Very interesting!

By: Barry Meislin

Barry Meislin — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 14:11:55 +0000

More like Florida Agonistes one might think.
– – – – – – – – –
“…forks…”
Indeed, but maybe that should be “salad tongs”?
(Da’ woman soitenly has a way wid woids…)

By: sdferr

sdferr — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 13:16:32 +0000

If your people are a few miles inland from the shore and tidal creeks, F, and hence the surge water, they should be ok. They’ll probably see cat 1 hurricane force winds, unlikely but possible cat 2 winds. The scary unknowns in Ft. Myers position relative to the storm is tornado, and that’s down to good or ill fortune, with very small footprints, we hope.

By: physicsguy

physicsguy — Tue, 08 Oct 2024 12:59:06 +0000

Tuesday morning update:

track the same, intensity models down some…thank God. For my daughter, now a strong 1 over Orlando, down from a 3.

Interesting thing: this morning woke up to clear skies, low temp, and low humidity here in Jax. Forecast was for clouds, rain, until Milton went through. I checked the surface map and the front has moved almost down to Miami. I don’t think this was expected and I wonder what it may do to the forecast maps.

Milton….. Paradise Lost????