With the speed of rocket formation from tropical depression to category 5 super typhoon, Hurricane Milton has dethroned Hurricane Yagi and become the planet’s historic storm in 2024.
Florida, USA, has not yet recovered from the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene not long ago, but Hurricane Milton has continued to attack. However, this time, Hurricane Milton is even more fierce and fierce, reaching the level of a super typhoon.
Forecast of Hurricane Milton’s path and destruction
Hurricane Milton is expected to make landfall on the densely populated west coast of Florida, where residents are still grappling with the devastation caused by Hurricane Helene less than two weeks ago.
The National Hurricane Center (NHC) said that Hurricane Milton has maximum sustained winds of 165 km/h. This is the highest wind speed in the 5 Saffir-Simpson scales. Currently, the storm center is 710 km southwest of Tampa, on the west coast of Florida. Hurricane Milton continues to move east-northeast at a speed of 17 km/h.
On Tuesday, October 8, Hurricane Milton raced toward the Gulf Coast of Florida as a Category 5 hurricane. Milton is expected to make landfall late Wednesday, October 9, or early Thursday, October 10, local time. The storm will pass through Orlando and reach the west coast of Florida on October 10. As it approaches the coast, Milton will have a speed of about 205 km/h, gusts of over 250 km/h, and bring with it a very heavy rainfall circulation.
According to expert Huy Nguyen of Kyoto University, with such high wind speeds and rainfall, houses in the storm-hit area are very susceptible to having their roofs blown off, windows broken, and walls collapsed. Although it is still just around the corner, Hurricane Milton has already caused serious traffic jams and fuel shortages in Florida. Currently, the state government has issued evacuation orders for more than 1 million people before Hurricane Milton makes landfall in the Tampa Bay area.
Hurricane Milton breaks record to become strongest storm on planet
Forming on Sunday morning, October 6 in the Gulf of Mexico and becoming a Category 5 super typhoon within 24 hours, Hurricane Milton exploded on October 7 with winds of up to 290 km/h. In just 8 hours, Super Typhoon Milton transformed from a tropical storm to a super typhoon. Early in the morning of October 8, the strongest winds measured were 285 km/h, gusting up to 345 km/h. This record number has made Milton surpass Typhoon Yagi to become the world’s strongest typhoon in 2024 up to this point.
Explaining why super typhoon Milton formed so quickly, in an interview with Japan’s NHK, scientist Huy Nguyen said that the unusually high sea surface temperature is one of the factors that caused the storm to form so quickly. It is known that the current sea surface temperature is at 29 – 30⁰C – a very high level in equatorial and subequatorial regions. Even in the ocean area far from the equator to the high northern latitudes, the ocean surface temperature is also high.
