IMPORTANT Hurricane Milton

Right by my house. Mass panicking in Weston. Lol

 

OK, you're not wrong in that's what this link says. But someone cut and pasted bad info on that page. 180 degrees from reality. 93L is heading east, out to sea. It is not a threat to FL or the US. I've looked at the global models.

 

So to clarify, if you look where the X is in the orange circle, that is considered the center of possible development. The elongated orange circle and shading to the right is where they are expecting it to move or drift. Since it is to the right of the storm, that would have it moving and heading east away from Florida and the US and out to sea.

 

The HH aircraft operates at around 10,000 feet. Based on what I've read, the conversion from flight level to surface level winds is a factor of .8-.9, so hearing someone say .9 is just taking the upper end of that. They also collect data from SFMR readings, but the not all samplings are reliable, so there's a certain amount of "reading the tea leaves" needed to interpret the data and give a ground level number. Of course, all of this is done in knots, then converted to mph and rounded up to the next 5mph. So .9 isn't a bad rule of thumb for typical storms.

Now, if you're in a "120mph" storm, and on the ground, are you likely to see 120mph wind? Not exactly. The true peak wind is concentrated in a narrow band to begin with. Then, friction with any sort of terrain, buildings, etc. is going to deflect some of that flow. That's just fluid dynamics. Interestingly, in meteorology the "ground level" wind is actually taken to be 10m off the surface. So that's what trees, buildings, etc. will feel the brunt of. Ants on the actual ground will tend to experience less.

 

It's interesting following this on radar now. The the last couple of hours, the general motion has been a little more north the true NE. If you drew a straight line from Miltons 11am position through its 1pm position, that line takes you north of Tampa. Here's where the landfall prediction gets tricky... as it gains latitude, at some point the flow will start pushing it more to the east. Exactly when that curve happens is what's going to determine the landfall location, and nobody can pinpoint that with certainty until it happens. I'm only saying this as a caution - beware commenters online who boldly state "Tampa Bay is safe" or nonsense like that. Anyone in the cone needs to assume this could be on their doorstep later today.

Run from the surge. Hide from the wind.

 

Very informative. Thank you.

 

Don't know if I made this up entirely, but I thought I remembered hearing at one point with tornadoes (not hurricanes) that intensification might typically tend to result in a turn to the right? Even if that's true, I don't know if it would apply to hurricanes at all. I was just thinking about the possibility watching Helene and Milton and whether weakening or strengthening has any affect at all on the path. Is there anything to this at all or am I totally out to lunch?

 

well above my pay grade. I mainly copy and paste

 

Ryan Hall got an earlier start today - due to all the tornado warnings - than he planned.

Live stream is up.

https://www.youtube.com/live/d-V_YnmER0Y?si=L5kJtWuHvFoqO0aM

 

I’ve never seen a tornado like that in Florida. They always seems to be narrow pencil looking ones. That looks like a tornado alley tornado.

 

I looked but couldn't find any St. Pete area live webcams that were working. Any links?

 

I haven't played around with it much, but here are some traffic cams. Edit to add - there are many, and you can search by County.

FL511

 

..MILTON GROWING IN SIZE AS IT MOVES CLOSER TO THE WEST COAST OF
FLORIDA...
...LIFE-THREATENING STORM SURGE, DAMAGING WINDS, AND FLOODING RAINS
EXPECTED ACROSS PORTIONS OF CENTRAL AND SOUTHWESTERN FLORIDA...


SUMMARY OF 200 PM EDT...1800 UTC...INFORMATION
----------------------------------------------
LOCATION...26.3N 84.0W
ABOUT 130 MI...210 KM W OF FT. MYERS FLORIDA
ABOUT 150 MI...240 KM SW OF TAMPA FLORIDA
MAXIMUM SUSTAINED WINDS...130 MPH...215 KM/H
PRESENT MOVEMENT...NNE OR 30 DEGREES AT 16 MPH...26 KM/H
MINIMUM CENTRAL PRESSURE...944 MB...27.88 INCHES

 

Hurricane-force winds extend outward up to 35 miles (55 km) from the
center and tropical-storm-force winds extend outward up to 250 miles
(280 km), especially to the north. A NOAA saildrone (SD-1083)
located about 50 miles east of the center recently reported a
sustained wind of 52 mph (84 km/h) and a wind gust of 70 mph (112
km/h).

STORM SURGE: The combination of a dangerous storm surge and the
tide will cause normally dry areas near the coast to be flooded by
rising waters moving inland from the shoreline. The water could
reach the following heights above ground somewhere in the indicated
areas if the peak surge occurs at the time of high tide...

Anna Maria Island, FL to Boca Grande, FL...9-13 ft
Anclote River, FL to Anna Maria Island, FL...8-12 ft
Tampa Bay...8-12 ft
Boca Grande, FL to Bonita Beach, FL...8-12 ft
Charlotte Harbor...8-12 ft
Bonita Beach, FL to Chokoloskee, FL...5-8 ft
Aripeka, FL to Anclote River, FL...3-5 ft
Chokoloskee, FL to Flamingo, FL...3-5 ft
Sebastian Inlet, FL to Altamaha Sound, GA...3-5 ft
Yankeetown, FL to Aripeka, FL...2-4 ft
Dry Tortugas...2-4 ft
St. Johns River...2-4 ft

 

16 mph
Landfall sooner than expected?

 

For sure Tampa Bay is not out of the woods. This wobble tracker shows a recent hard right turn though.

https://www.wfla.com/weather/tracki...rricane-miltons-path-could-have-huge-impacts/