After churning over the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, Milton made landfall near Sarasota, Florida, around 8:30 PM on Wednesday as a powerful Category 3 hurricane with winds of up to 120 miles per hour. The storm – and the many tornadoes it spawned – ripped the roofs off homes and a major baseball stadium and left more than three million people without power across the peninsula. There have been several fatalities so far.

Sarasota is located just south of Tampa, which was spared the eye of the hurricane and the extreme storm surge. Remarkably, the winds from Milton actually caused a so-called reverse storm surge in Tampa Bay, with seawater retreating. But Tampa, the region’s largest city, still suffered severe flooding: Milton dumped an astonishing 17 inches of rain on the region on Wednesday, causing what some have described as a 1,000-year flood.

Sarasota, meanwhile, recorded a storm surge of at least 10 feet, sending seawater into the city. Surge is typically the deadliest part of a hurricane. It floods neighborhoods, can cause houses to collapse and people to drown. Prior to landfall, Milton also produced an outbreak of tornadoes, prompting the National Weather Service to issue more than a hundred tornado warnings.

As of Thursday morning, Milton was still a Category 1 storm just off the east coast of Florida, although the storm is expected to weaken later today as it moves further offshore.

What’s especially bad is that Milton — the ninth hurricane in the Atlantic Ocean during what government officials predicted would be a particularly active season — hit parts of Florida still reeling from the impact of Hurricane Helene. Helene made landfall just two weeks ago, killing more than 200 people in the South and Appalachia and a dozen people in the Tampa Bay area. Milton sparked a historic evacuation of West Florida.

On the one hand, Hurricane Milton is highly unusual. As I wrote earlier this week, the hurricane intensified incredibly quickly, transforming from a tropical storm to a Category 5 in about 24 hours. With wind speeds reaching 190 miles per hour earlier this week and very low pressure, it is one of the strongest hurricanes ever recorded in the Atlantic Ocean.

On the other hand, extreme storms like Milton are exactly what the world’s leading climate scientists have been predicting for years now. Burning fossil fuels not only warms the air, but also the ocean, and warm water is the key ingredient for super-powerful hurricanes. The threat becomes even greater when you consider that more and more people are moving to the Florida coast.

Hurricane Milton’s toll will become clearer in the coming days, and we’ll be here to keep you informed. In the meantime, here are a handful of stories that really helped me understand the threat of superstorms and how we can better prepare for them.

The back-to-back events of Hurricanes Helene and Milton spell disaster for Florida communities that have barely begun to rebuild and repair the damage from Helene. A climatologist from the Florida Climate Center explains this uniquely destructive moment, and why we should find some reassurance as emergency responses and preparations become better and more efficient.

Insured losses from natural disasters around the world in the first half of the year have already reached more than $60 billion, 54 percent higher than the ten-year average – and that’s before the estimated tens of billions of dollars in claims from Hurricanes Helene and Milton are added. to the count. As the weather warms and storms worsen, insurers are raising rates to eye-popping numbers or refusing to insure some homeowners altogether.

Milton arrives as communities continue to recover from Hurricane Helene, which caused flooding, days of power outages and fatalities in six states, including Georgia, North Carolina and Florida. In Helene’s wake, a litany of questions have arisen about the Federal Emergency Management Agency’s role in getting vital assistance to survivors. What does a good government response to horrific natural disasters look like in a time of escalating dangers from climate change?

Since Hurricane Helene swamped parts of Western North Carolina late last month, former President Donald Trump has used the tragedy to perpetuate lies about the federal response, sowing chaos and confusion while repeatedly and falsely suggesting that the federal government deliberately neglects areas with Republican interests. voters, that it sends emergency aid to migrants instead of disaster relief, and that it gives only $750 in aid to hurricane victims. Experts say the misinformation could harm relief efforts and deter survivors from seeking help.

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