The veteran weather forecaster whose emotional prediction of Hurricane Milton’s impact went viral says that meteorologists have long known that this once-in-a-century superstorm was coming.
Just 10 days after Hurricane Helene left at least 230 people dead and thousands of homes flooded across Florida, Hurricane Milton is set to bring devastating storm surges and winds of up to 175mph. Expert John Morales says it was the knowledge of the impact the Category Five storm will have that made him almost tearful during the broadcast.
He told CNN : “It was just a mixture of empathy for those people, as well as the angst of increasingly frequent and more severe extreme weather events and just frustration over being a climate communicator for over 20 years and realising this is happening and we knew it was coming.”
The rapidly-changing climate is changing the way that hurricanes behave. It's allowing them develop more rapidly, and dumping ever-greater amounts of rain on already hard-pressed impact areas such as Florida and the US southeast coats.
Morales says he has become increasingly concerned about the impact of increasingly-rapid climate change, adding: "These symptoms of the changing climate has changed me from a cool cucumber to somebody that’s certainly more agitated and in a bit of dismay about what’s going on.”
On Monday, the US the National Hurricane Centre said Milton’s sustained winds had hit 180 mph. By barometric pressure — a measure of storm intensity — Milton is already the fourth strongest hurricane in recorded history with central barometric pressure at 897 millibars. The superstorm is approaching the theoretical limit of how powerful a hurricane can become.
But that limit may change as the planets’ oceans become warmer, says Jake Carstens, assistant professor in the Department of Atmospheric Sciences at the University of North Dakota. He told the Miami Herald: “With warming oceans, the ceiling and the potential for a storm to really tap into its fuel source is increasing. If anything, we’re raising the ceiling.”
And at present, the Florida city of Tampa is right in the firing line. Tampa General Hospital, the area's main hospital and only trauma centre is built on an island only a few feet above sea level. It’s currently protected by a 15-foot “AquaFence” and all patients have been moved from the building’s ground floor.
Jennifer Crabtree, chief of staff at Tampa General, told the Tampa Bay Times that the hospital has its own self-sufficient energy plant and a 5,000-gallon supply of fresh water – along with five days’ worth of food.
Meanwhile Congresswoman Marjorie Taylor Greene has sensationally claimed that the successive devastating hurricanes smashing into Florida had been deliberately engineered by the US government.
“Yes they can control the weather,” the member of the US Congress for Georgia told her 1.2million Twitter followers, ”It’s ridiculous for anyone to lie and say it can’t be done.”
Deanne Criswell, who leads the Federal Emergency Management Agency [FEMA] responded by saying that Greene – who herself had attempted to block emergency funding for the agency. – was aversely affecting the morale of rescue workers.
“It’s frankly ridiculous, and just plain false,” Criswell said.”This kind of rhetoric is not helpful to people. It’s really a shame that we’re putting politics ahead of helping people, and that’s what we’re here to do.”
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