Why it could be so disastrous for Tampa Bay.

Hurricane Milton rapidly developed from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane. This happened in just over 24 hours – one of the fastest amplification rates ever observed on Earth. Meteorologists have even begun to speculate that Milton could reach the theoretical maximum intensity of an Atlantic basin hurricane of 190 mph (310 km/h), challenging the record set by Hurricane Allen in 1980.

In response to Milton, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis is ordering millions of people to leave their homes and seek safety – the state’s largest evacuation since Category 5 Hurricane Irma in 2017.

Milton is expected to make landfall north of Tampa Bay, its strong winds and waves driven by the record-hot waters of the Gulf of Mexico. While Milton could become weaker or strike elsewhere, that is not the case at the moment is remarkably similar to the Tampa Bay hurricane of 1921 – the most recent major hurricane to make landfall in that particular region.

This all comes on the heels of Category 4 Hurricane Helene, which hit Florida in late September. Although it made landfall much further north, it produced “several million cubic meters” of storm debris in the Tampa area. Thousands of businesses and beachfront homes were damaged, and the rubble was thrown together by record-breaking flooding. Now Milton’s approach is producing surreal scenes: Tampa Bay Times reporter Max Chesnes posted a video on On the other side was a block-long line to collect sandbags for preparation for Milton (sandbags can help block water).

While it wasn’t a direct hit, Helene was still the worst hurricane the Tampa Bay region has seen in more than 100 years, adding to the damage caused by Category 1 Hurricane Debby earlier this year. This is already making for a hellish hurricane season in Florida. But the worst may be yet to come for Milton.

As of Monday morning, the maximum storm surge forecast for Milton by the National Hurricane Center for Tampa Bay was 8 to 12 feet and will almost certainly be revised upward. That would double the record-breaking water levels from Hurricane Helene. It would also dwarf the storm the region faced in the 1921 hurricane.

The fact that Tampa has gone more than 100 years without landings of Category 3 or higher is a coincidence that has not been lost on regional planners. Four years ago, communities in the Tampa area conducted a tabletop exercise to simulate the response to a hurricane called Hurricane Phoenix, which was eerily similar to Milton.

The fictional Hurricane Phoenix even had its own frightening theatrical trailer created by the Tampa Bay Regional Planning Council:

According to a decade-old estimate by Karen Clark and Co., a Boston-based disaster modeling firm, a direct hit from a Category 5 hurricane in Tampa Bay could cause more than $175 billion in damage and potentially kill thousands – a Hurricane Katrina -Disaster or worse. And that’s just how it is.

But this hurricane isn’t even happening in isolation. The double whammy of Helene and Milton is what climatologists call a “compound event.” With little to no time to prepare between landfalls, the human misery will be greater than the sum of the two storms individually. This was highlighted as a symptom of climate change in the most recent national climate assessment released by the Biden administration last year. As sea levels rise and flooding becomes more common, people in Tampa are already fearing the impact of another increase in housing costs that this year’s storm season will likely bring.

Driven in part by a decades-long streak of hurricanes – most of the damage occurred elsewhere in the state – urban west-central Florida has expanded rapidly. Over the last 50 years, the Tampa-St. The Petersburg–Clearwater metropolitan area added almost 2.5 million people, a growth of 187 percent.

A century of hectic beach development has led to irrational decisions, the epicenter of which is low-lying Pinellas County. A million people live there, crammed onto a narrow peninsula that juts out into the Gulf and includes a chain of 11 offshore islands. If Milton strikes as currently predicted, Pinellas County will never be the same.

Tampa Bay’s marine bathymetry makes the region particularly vulnerable to the effects of a direct hurricane. The river’s shallow mouth funnels flood water into the bay, making the metropolitan region one of the most vulnerable places in the world to storm surges. Although the current forecast is lower for now, in a worst-case scenario, a major hurricane like Milton could cause a storm surge of 20 to 30 feet on the order of Hurricane Katrina. A direct hit from a Category 5 just north of Tampa Bay would maximize the extent of the storm surge; If such a situation occurs, it is expected to be the costliest natural disaster in U.S. history. It remains to be seen whether Milton will pull off exactly this worst-case scenario – but right now it’s likely to be very, very bad either way.

Insurance companies expected this, but that doesn’t mean they created a reliable safety net. For decades, private home insurers in Florida have been increasing their rates due to the population boom. But in 2022, a near miss from Hurricane Ian rattled nerves and resulted in thousands of homeowners insurance being abandoned.

As if it wasn’t enough that millions of people were threatened by record-breaking double hurricane disasters in two weeks, former President Donald Trump and his allies are stoking conspiracy theories and malicious misinformation about the government’s relief efforts for political reasons. Even worse and stranger was the statement from Georgia Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, who then doubled down on her wild theory that “they” controlled hurricanes and steered them into Republican states to try to rig the election.

In response, Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg said in an interview on Sunday that misinformation about hurricane relief was “actively detrimental and disruptive to the process of returning to normalcy.”

The reality of climate change is bad enough without late capitalism and MAGA making it worse. For people following Milton’s path, the Centers for Disease Control maintains a disaster hotline if you need someone to talk to To.