Hurricane Milton made landfall last night and has rapidly tracked across Florida and is already offshore as of 5am. There are still warnings up on the east coast of Florida/Georgia/South Carolina, but those will expire later today …
The current impact estimates are still in the $60-$75 Billion range, we can’t really refine them until the storm has fully left the area. There were unfortunately fatalities, for sure in the tornado outbreak that hit the southern part of the state, and no doubt this has left a substantial trail of misery and destruction.
This was a wet storm for being so fast moving, 16″ reported in St. Petersburg (a total similar to that in Savannah from the much more slowly moving Debby). Here are the 24h rain totals as of 5am:
Milton is moving rapidly offshore – it no longer looks much like a hurricane, and is well in to transitioning in to an extratropical system. The radar composite and IR animation of the last few hours shows that quite clearly:
For the east coast of Florida, things should rapidly improve with the coming of daylight. Likewise, here in the suburbs of Frogmore (Savannah, Beaufort, HHI) and more distant environs (Hinesville southward) things should not get much worse than they are now, winds peaking around 8-9am, although it will be breezy the rest of the day. Rain looks to be almost over already, although another scattered shower or two before 10am wouldn’t be surprising.
Still looking for a higher than normal tide at 2pm today, and likely the overnight high tide. They may peak at 10ft at the Ft. Pulaski gauge, so that means some shallow coastal flooding in the usual spots. Probably won’t top US-80 (the road to Tybee Island), but might get close.
Milton should stay well north of The Bahamas, causing only some breezy rain showers and waves. Likewise it should stay south of Bermuda, and should be completely gone in 3-4 days.
Please don’t let Milton and Florida push North Carolina and our inland areas that got hit so hard off the news cycle. I’ve seen this happen too many times, that when one disaster follows another governments and humanitarian agencies move on before the first area gets all the help it needs.
Why do you call it Frogmore
It’s become sort of an ongoing inside joke (not that Frogmore is a joke!). People are always asking about this or that community that unless you live nearby, hard to know where they are talking about. The other issue is “Beaufort”, which locals pronounce “Be you fert” but really probably should be pronounced “Boh fort” (after Sir Francis Beaufort, and how the town in North Carolina is pronounced). Finally, it has a great little airport that many pilots use for practice.
Another nothing burger for Savannah (Dodge City). Thank you for your wonderful work.
Literally Dodge City – oh, you meant storms, not gunfire :O
Thank you so much for all of your sane reporting. I want to make a “donation “ to you. Cannot find where to do that.
– Elizabeth Newkirk
when you say estimates are in the $60-$75B range, is that insured losses or total losses?
Neither – it is the estimated economic impact. The amount covered by commercial insurance (I know it’s the industry term, but don’t like the phrase “loss” for technical economic reasons since their “loss” is someone else’s gain) is probably only 40-50% of the total impact.
As always, I can’t thank you enough for the dedication and time you put in to keep us informed with solid information without the drama! One question: before I take my hurricane shutters down, is there anything brewing out there that has a possibility of developing into another hurricane to hit SW Florida? While they are life saver for my windows and home, the hurricane shutters take hours to put up and hours to take down. Thanks!
Nothing on the horizon in either GFS or ECM in teh near term (10-14 days). But it is SW Florida 😮