Hurricane Milton made landfall on Siesta Key in Florida at 20:30 Eastern Time on October 9. It was a category 3 storm with sustained winds estimated at 120 mph (195 km/h). Siesta Key is located to the south of Tampa and St. Petersburg.

Widespread damage has been reported and as of 09:30 Eastern Time on October 10, over 3 million customers are without power in the state. These are generally clustered in Central Florida.

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A landfall south of Tampa Bay limited the storm surge that went up the bay and into the urban area. Storm surge is a localized rise in sea level caused by wind pushing ocean water forward.

The right-front quadrant of a storm in the Northern Hemisphere typically sees the worst storm surge because the counter-clockwise motion of wind in low pressure systems means that wind in that section of a storm is enhanced by the forward motion of the storm. In Milton, the right-front quadrant was the southeastern quarter of the storm.

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Storm surge was widespread to the south of Sarasota with numerous flooding reports down the state’s west coast to Fort Myers. Heavy rainfall produced “normal” flooding as well. The National Weather Service reports that 35 people were rescued from flooding in Plant City.

Strong landfalling hurricanes are known to produce tornadoes. These are commonly found in the outer bands of the storm. Wind shear is a major contributor of their formation because in a hurricane, the low level winds in the outer bands will be moving at a different direction than upper level winds. This generates the spin needed for strong thunderstorms and some tornadoes.

The tornado outbreak from Hurricane Milton was remarkable. According to data from the Iowa Environmental Mesonet (IEM), local National Weather Service offices issued 126 tornado warnings in Florida on October 9.

This breaks the old record of 111 warnings issued in the state on a single day, set January 22, 2017. Data in the IEM database goes back to 1986 but they note that data quality decreases for years earlier than 2003.

It is important to note that one tornado warning does not equal one tornado. Some warned storms do not end up producing tornadoes, and some tornadoes last long enough to receive multiple warnings.

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As of the morning of October 10, the Storm Prediction Center had received 45 tornado reports for October 9. Several of these were large and long-lasting tornadoes. Many were clustered around Port St. Lucie and Vero Beach but others were spread out throughout the southern half of the Florida Peninsula.

Videos circulated around social media of large tornadoes crossing Interstate 75 as well as tearing through neighborhoods. One weather station in Palm Beach County recorded a wind gust of 92 mph (148 km/h) as a tornado passed over or near that location.

None of the tornadoes have been rated so far. Tornadoes are rated on the Enhanced Fujita scale, which estimates wind speed based on observed damage. National Weather Service offices in Florida will be busy conducting damage surveys to determine how many tornadoes formed, where they went, and how strong they were.

In addition to favorable wind shear, Milton’s tornado outbreak was especially productive because of the number of discrete supercells in the outer bands. By discrete, meteorologists mean that the thunderstorms are individual cells rather than connected to each other along a line or in some other form, allowing the cells to develop a more dynamic structure.

This is in contrast to the northern half of the hurricane, which had widespread steady rain. Tornadoes can develop in steady rain as well but these are rarer and shorter lived.

While Hurricane Milton led to a record number of tornado warnings in Florida, it did not produce a record number of tornadoes. Hurricane Ivan produced 120 tornadoes from Florida north to the Mid-Atlantic in September 2004. Ivan holds the record for known tornadoes produced by a tropical cyclone. Hurricane Beulah in 1964 produced 115 tornadoes.

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Hurricane Milton’s tornado outbreak was limited by available land and the amount of time the hurricane spent onshore. The storm only produced tornadoes in the southern part of Florida on one day whereas Ivan traveled from Florida to the Mid-Atlantic over the course of three days.

Still, it doesn’t matter whether or not it was a record for people impacted by the storm. Tornado damage is tornado damage no matter how many other tornadoes happened. Florida is likely to be cleaning up from these tornadoes and other damage caused by Hurricane Milton for some time.

As of 08:00 Eastern Time on October 10, Hurricane Milton has entered the Atlantic Ocean and is moving away from Florida. Tropical storm force winds remain on the Space Coast but will decrease through the morning. Milton is forecast to transition to an extratropical cyclone on October 11 as it moves eastward.

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The featured image is Hurricane Milton taken from the International Space Station on October 7. (NASA)

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