1 month ago
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A haunting set of maps from NASA’s Earth Observatory reveal the incredibly warm gulf waters that gave rise to Hurricane Milton, which is set to make landfall on western Florida tonight.
Hurricane season runs from June 1 through November 30, and describes when the coastal Atlantic Ocean and Gulf of Mexico warm up, causing hurricanes. Hurricanes are nothing new, but in the last year and change the waters in the Mexican gulf and the Atlantic Ocean around Florida have been much warmer than usual—we’re talking bathtub temperatures—which can be a breeding ground for intense hurricanes.
Lo and behold: two Category 4+ storms hitting Florida in as many weeks. Now, according to an analysis by a network of climate scientists investigating weather, climate change may have played a part in the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Helene last month.
The map above (and shown again below, next to an image showing the water surface temperatures across the gulf) shows where Milton formed. The data was taken by NASA’s Short-term Prediction Research and Transition (or SPoRT!) project on October 5, 6, and 7. Surface temperatures above 82° Fahrenheit (27.8° Celsius), the temperature above which hurricanes tend to form, are visualized in dark red. The map also shows the path of Milton over those few days, and the second map overlays the first map with the storm itself. 
According to an Earth Observatory release, Milton was also helped by a low vertical wind shear, meaning that there wasn’t much difference in the direction or speed of winds at higher altitudes of the storm versus lower altitudes. Basically, there was a fairly uniform wind environment that helped Milton build vertically. On October 8, Milton underwent an eye wall replacement, during which its winds temporarily decreased but allowed the storm to grow larger.
“Even if the maximum wind speed decreases in the coming days, the storm will likely grow in size,” said Patrick Duran, a hurricane expert with the SPoRT project, in the release. “This could increase its impacts, especially by increasing storm surge along the coast.”
Milton is projected to cause storm surges of over 12 feet—and possibly 15 feet—in areas around Sarasota, Florida, after dramatically surging to a Category 5 storm from just a Category 1 system in about 7 hours. Milton has since weakened slightly to a Category 4 storm, but in case I have to state the obvious, it’s still an incredibly dangerous storm—hence the number of evacuation orders issued across the Sunshine State. The National Weather Service’s branch in Miami is live-tweeting tornado warnings—and we still have hours before the storm arrives.
Just saw a tornado forming over the Everglades from the turnpike pic.twitter.com/JKRknLUKtK
— trisarahtops (@sarahlo_aww) October 9, 2024
In May, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and Colorado State University both predicted a much busier-than-average hurricane season—between 17 and 25 named storms, between eight to 13 of which were predicted to become hurricanes. Between four and seven of those hurricanes were predicted to be major hurricanes. For comparison, the 1991 to 2020 averages are 14.4 named storms per year, 7.2 hurricanes, and 3.2 major hurricanes.
Though it’s difficult to determine the exact relationship between climate change and hurricanes, warmer weather indisputably intensifies the storms. Even if someone is dubious about climate change’s effect on hurricanes, they could dip a thermometer into the Gulf of Mexico and find it’s very, very ripe for the massive storms.
Helene made landfall on Florida’s Big Bend on September 27 and over the course of several days charted a path inland through Georgia, causing tornadoes as far east as South Carolina and devastating flooding in western North Carolina and Tennessee. The storm killed at least 227 people, the highest death toll from a mainland hurricane in the United States since Hurricane Katrina (2005).
According to the flash study—as in, one put together quickly—by World Weather Attribution, climate change boosted Hurricane Helene’s rainfall by about 10% and its winds by about 11%. You can read the study in its entirety here.
“Hurricane Helene and the storms that were happening in the region anyway have all been amplified by the fact that the air is warmer and can hold more moisture, which meant that the rainfall totals—which, even without climate change, would have been incredibly high given the circumstances—were even higher,” Ben Clarke, a climate researcher at Imperial College London and co-author of the research, told the AP.
A separate analysis cited by the AP, conducted by scientists at the Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, found that climate change caused 50% more rainfall in parts of Georgia and the Carolinas. In the buildup to Helene there was plenty (rightful) concern about the devastation the storm would bring to the coastal states, but the hurricane ended up wreaking havoc as far north as the towns that pepper the Appalachian Trail.
In more recent days, the internet has become a hotbed of conspiracy theories surrounding the rapid intensification of Hurricane Milton. It is a funny quirk of the human mind that some people can square climate change denialism with the conviction that the government is creating hurricanes. We’re all just vessels for different kinds of contradictions to coexist, washing up against each other like 82-degree seawater.
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Graphic: NOAA
Hurricane season doesn’t end until November 30, meaning that there’s still another 51 days during which the storms are particularly likely to form. Many parts of Florida didn’t even have time to clear out the debris from Helene before battening down the hatches for Milton (both of which you’ll note in the list of named storms above, so you can also see the names we may associate with disaster in the near-future).
You can stay informed about active storms via NOAA’s National Hurricane Center and Central Pacific Hurricane Center portals. And remember: if local and federal authorities tell you to evacuate, do so. Even the best models cannot fully predict the movements and ferocity of a storm, and you don’t want to witness its force firsthand.
