(Bloomberg) — Tropical Storm Milton is threatening to grow into a major hurricane aimed at Florida’s Gulf Coast including Tampa, potentially causing billions of dollars in damage and heaping more misery on a state and region still reeling from Helene less than two weeks ago.
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Milton’s top winds reached 65 miles (105 kilometers) per hour Sunday about 835 miles west-southwest of Tampa, with the storm forecast to grow into a Category 3 hurricane as it crosses the warm Gulf of Mexico, the US National Hurricane Center said. That puts the storm on course for 125-mph winds capable of tearing roofs off buildings and snapping trees by landfall on Wednesday. Governor Ron DeSantis has declared an emergency in 35 counties. President Joe Biden was briefed on the storm’s potential impact, according to the White House.
“We think Milton will likely become a hurricane today or tomorrow and current estimates are that it has the potential to be a major hurricane,” DeSantis said at a news conference Sunday. He predicted more power outages than with Helene.
“It’s a scary situation,” said Brandon Buckingham, a meteorologist at commercial-forecaster AccuWeather Inc. “We expect by late in the day Tuesday or Tuesday night conditions to really begin to deteriorate; during the day on Wednesday will be the most impactful time. Do not take this lightly.”
Deanne Criswell, administrator of the Federal Emergency Management Agency, said FEMA was “absolutely ready” for Milton.
“We have started planning for this days ago, even before it formed. We know that it’s headed straight towards Florida,” she said on ABC’s This Week.
“We will move more resources in there to support their needs, but we have a lot of people in Florida already,” she added.
Milton would be the second major hurricane to hit the US in two weeks following Helene, which killed at least 225 people across the South and caused as much as $250 billion in losses and damages by AccuWeather’s estimates. So far, 13 storms have formed across the Atlantic Ocean in the six-month hurricane season and four hurricanes have hit the US, including Helene and Beryl in July that shut down power in Houston, the fourth-most populous US city.
As Milton moves eastward across the Gulf, it will be fueled by very warm water and almost no adverse atmospheric conditions, Jack Beven, a senior hurricane specialist at the National Hurricane Center, said in a forecast analysis, though it may weaken somewhat from dry air and wind shear as it nears the shore.
Milton is currently a small storm, so it will be compact. However, wherever it hits would be devastated. A year ago, Hurricane Otis, also quite small but strong, killed at least 50 people and led to widespread damage in Acapulco, Mexico.
For Milton, “the worst case scenario” would be for the storm to hit the Florida coast just north of Tampa, Buckingham said. Hurricanes spin counter-clockwise in the northern hemisphere, so in such a spot Milton would push all of its worst storm surge and winds into Tampa Bay endangering the city and region. More than 3.2 million live in the Tampa-St. Petersburg region.
The effects may be even worse because Helene’s winds and surge wiped out many beaches along Florida’s west coast, leaving the area more vulnerable to Milton’s power.
Chuck Watson, a disaster modeler at Enki Research, on Sunday predicted an economic impact of between $30 billion and $50 billion, down from his prior estimate of damage and losses potentially exceeding $200 billion.
The hurricane center stresses it’s still too early to say for certain where Milton will strike, but residents along the shoreline in Florida need to prepare.
“Regardless of the details, there is increasing confidence that a powerful hurricane with life-threatening hazards will be affecting portions of the Florida west coast around the middle of this week,” Beven said.
(Updates with comments from DeSantis, Criswell starting in third paragraph.)
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