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Hurricane Milton leaves people dead as 120mph winds follow 'extraordinarily powerful' tornadoes
Hurricane Milton ploughed into Florida as a Category 3 storm, bringing misery to a coast still ravaged by Helene, pounding cities with winds of over 100 mph after producing a barrage of tornadoes
People have already been reported dead in Florida, US, following a barrage of powerful tornadoes before Hurricane Milton even made landfall on Wednesday.
The hurricane has since brought with it terrifying 120mph wind speeds and 12ft deep floods. Deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on, but local authorities did not specify how many residents had been killed. "We have lost some life," St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News.
Roofs shredded, vehicles flipped upside down and debris sucked into devastating black V-shaped columns, has become the frightening reality across Florida's Atlantic Coast.
By Wednesday evening, more than 130 tornado warnings associated with Milton had been issued by National Weather Services offices in Florida.
The appearance of tornadoes before and during hurricanes isn't unusual, scientists say, but the twisters' ferocity was.
"It's definitely out of the ordinary," said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. "Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they're usually weak. What we saw today was much closer to what we see in the Great Plains in the spring."
Tornadoes spawned by hurricanes and tropical storms most often occur in the right-front quadrant of the storm, but sometimes they can also take place near the storm's eyewall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The heat and humidity present in the atmosphere during such storms and changes in wind direction or speed with height, known as wind shear, contribute to their likelihood.
"There's an incredible amount of swirling going on," Gensini said of the conditions that allowed for the twisters to grow. "Those tornadoes were just in a very favourable environment."
The warming of the oceans by climate change is making hurricanes more intense, but Gensini said he did not know of any connection between human-caused warming and the deadly tornadoes that Floridians experienced with Milton.
Approximately 12.6 million people in the state were facing potential exposure under a National Weather Service tornado advisory in place until Wednesday night.
The storm knocked out power across a large section of Florida, with more than 2.6 million homes and businesses without power as of early Thursday, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
Videos posted to Reddit and other social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighbourhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.
Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said he wasn't sure whether Milton had spawned a record number of tornados, but he pointed out that only 64 Florida tornado warnings were associated with Hurricane Ian, which hit the Tampa Bay area as a massive storm in 2022.
Florida has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state. But they're usually not as severe as those in Midwest and Plains. However, a big outburst of powerful twisters killed 42 people and injured over 260 in Central Florida in the space of a few hours in February 1998.
Daily Star Sunday
Hurricane Milton ploughed into Florida as a Category 3 storm, bringing misery to a coast still ravaged by Helene, pounding cities with winds of over 100 mph after producing a barrage of tornadoes
People have already been reported dead in Florida, US, following a barrage of powerful tornadoes before Hurricane Milton even made landfall on Wednesday.
The hurricane has since brought with it terrifying 120mph wind speeds and 12ft deep floods. Deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on, but local authorities did not specify how many residents had been killed. "We have lost some life," St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson told WPBF News.
Roofs shredded, vehicles flipped upside down and debris sucked into devastating black V-shaped columns, has become the frightening reality across Florida's Atlantic Coast.
By Wednesday evening, more than 130 tornado warnings associated with Milton had been issued by National Weather Services offices in Florida.
The appearance of tornadoes before and during hurricanes isn't unusual, scientists say, but the twisters' ferocity was.
"It's definitely out of the ordinary," said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. "Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they're usually weak. What we saw today was much closer to what we see in the Great Plains in the spring."
Tornadoes spawned by hurricanes and tropical storms most often occur in the right-front quadrant of the storm, but sometimes they can also take place near the storm's eyewall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.
The heat and humidity present in the atmosphere during such storms and changes in wind direction or speed with height, known as wind shear, contribute to their likelihood.
"There's an incredible amount of swirling going on," Gensini said of the conditions that allowed for the twisters to grow. "Those tornadoes were just in a very favourable environment."
The warming of the oceans by climate change is making hurricanes more intense, but Gensini said he did not know of any connection between human-caused warming and the deadly tornadoes that Floridians experienced with Milton.
Approximately 12.6 million people in the state were facing potential exposure under a National Weather Service tornado advisory in place until Wednesday night.
The storm knocked out power across a large section of Florida, with more than 2.6 million homes and businesses without power as of early Thursday, according to poweroutage.us, which tracks utility reports.
Videos posted to Reddit and other social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighbourhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.
Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said he wasn't sure whether Milton had spawned a record number of tornados, but he pointed out that only 64 Florida tornado warnings were associated with Hurricane Ian, which hit the Tampa Bay area as a massive storm in 2022.
Florida has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state. But they're usually not as severe as those in Midwest and Plains. However, a big outburst of powerful twisters killed 42 people and injured over 260 in Central Florida in the space of a few hours in February 1998.
Daily Star Sunday