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Category 5 Major Hurricane Milton Tracking Toward Florida

John Baranick
By  John Baranick , DTN Meteorologist
A satellite image over the Gulf of Mexico shows the intensity and eye structure of Hurricane Milton which reached Category 5 strength Monday morning. The storm track has it moving into Florida as a Category 3 hurricane Wednesday evening. (Satellite image from College of DuPage, hurricane track graphic from the National Hurricane Center)

Hurricane Milton has gone through rapid intensification from Sunday morning to Monday morning. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) tracked the intensification of 80 knots from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane in just 24 hours. The NHC records this as the third greatest increase in intensity, being eclipsed only by Wilma in 2005 and Felix in 2007.

As of 10:55 a.m. CDT Monday, Milton was northwest of the tip of the Yucatan Peninsula with maximum sustained winds of 160 miles per hour, making it a Category 5 hurricane. By 1 p.m. CDT the maximum sustained winds reached 175 mph.

The storm will skirt the northern edge of the Yucatan Peninsula on Monday into early Tuesday morning, but should remain offshore. From there, it will make a turn northeast and head toward the Florida Peninsula. The current consensus track from the NHC has Milton reaching landfall in the Tampa Bay area Wednesday evening as a Category 3 hurricane, but the cone of uncertainty is relatively large.

The current cone as of the 10 a.m. update from the NHC is anywhere from Fort Myers up to Horseshoe Beach in the Big Bend area, a spread of about 225 miles, though the most densely packed models are in a range from Venice to about Hermosa Springs, still a distance of 120 miles.

Thus far, Milton has had near-perfect conditions for development, which has resulted in the incredible intensification.

However, on Tuesday and Wednesday, the storm will fight stronger upper-level winds in the eastern Gulf of Mexico and is forecast to weaken quite a bit before landfall. Going from a Category 5 to a Category 3 would be a significant drop in the intensity of the winds. However, those in Florida should not be relieved and this forecast may be a little too weak depending on the eye replacement cycles and the overall intensity of the upper-level winds it will run into.

Winds will spread out from the storm and cover more area with at least tropical storm-force winds. And hurricane force winds could extend out more than 80 miles from the center, especially along the coast. The large wind field of the hurricane is likely to lead to intense storm surge up and down the Gulf Coast of Florida, with 8-12 feet of extra water near and just south of the landfall.

After making its way onshore Wednesday evening, it should continue to weaken as it interacts with a front and become extra-tropical as it moves into the Atlantic early Thursday morning. This comes two weeks after Hurricane Helene tore through the Big Bend area of Florida on its way north through the southern Appalachians. Those in northern Florida, southern Georgia and coastal South Carolina are still recovering from the damage. A shift in the track to the northern end of the cone of uncertainty could bring these areas into more of the heavy rain and some of the wind from the hurricane.

The transition to an extra-tropical cyclone will mean more intense rain by interacting with the front over northern Florida. While heavy rain will be common around the coast, the heaviest rain should therefore be on the northern edge of the storm track where 6-12 inches are being forecast by the NHC from an area from Tampa to Orlando north to Horseshoe Beach to Jacksonville, causing areas of flooding.

One of the concerns of the hurricane is how it might affect phosphorous production facilities in Florida. As DTN Staff Reporter Russ Quinn reports, the hurricane is taking a straight shot at several facilities just east of the Tampa Bay area and in the path of the hurricane.

To see Quinn's story, go to https://www.dtnpf.com/….

To find more weather conditions and your local forecast from DTN, head over to https://www.dtnpf.com/…

John Baranick can be reached at john.baranick@dtn.com

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