ORLANDO, Fla. – Per the National Hurricane Center, Hurricane Milton was one of the strongest hurricanes of record in the Atlantic basin, reaching Category 5 intensity with a minimum central pressure below 900mbs.
It will be remembered by Central Floridians for years, if not decades, to come.
Milton was a somewhat unusual storm all the way around. From start to finish, its development, track, landfall and transition to an extra-tropical cyclone were all outside the traditional fashion.
The hurricane made landfall on our west coast as a Category 3 storm, having weakened as a result of upper level wind shear and dry air that was able to penetrate the storms core and practically erode its entire southern half. This was both a blessing and a curse.
But let’s rewind the clock and discuss what turned the ignition key for what would become such a historic storm.
According to researchers at the NHC, who took a deep dive behind how Milton was spawn, a tropical wave had come off the coast of Africa middle of September 2024. So you can make a case, Milton was already pre-existing even as we Floridians were battening down the hatches for Helene coming up our west coast.
The wave that would go on and form Milton interacted with a low-level trough just to the immediate west of the Cabo Verde Islands only a few miles off the coast of Africa.
From there, the wave had little to no thunderstorms associated with it as it made its way across the greater Atlantic toward the Caribbean Sea. Even there, hurricane center observed little organization with it, which is why it was never given the classic “yellow blip” of development odds on their charts.
When the wave reached the western Caribbean Sea, a few days after Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Big Bend of Florida, it interacted with a very broad area of low pressure associated with something called the “Central American Gyre” (you will hear this terminology a lot once this upcoming hurricane season gets started). The same gyre is what helped instigate the development of Helene.
Because of the wave interaction, coupled with what was left of the gyre over Central America, there was leftover troughing that extended from the Bay of Campeche into the central Gulf and back down into the eastern Pacific. This was the tipping point.
Convection in the axis of the wave started to bubble and remnants of a previous tropical depression in the eastern Pacific were pulled northward and more or less “clumped together” to form a more impressive area of showers and storms that started to rotate.
Within the span of 24 hours, models started to latch onto this quickly. I’ll never forget how fast computer models went from zero, a rain maker for Central Florida, to suddenly a bonified hurricane headed our way.
Milton began as a tropical depression on Oct. 5, 2024, and rapidly intensified from there.
Things got interesting from here. Surface air pressure started to go up north of where Milton was positioned as a tropical storm. This is why it didn’t take a more classic route up toward Texas or Louisiana, nor was it able to crash westward into Mexico as tropical storms Alberto and Chris had done earlier in the 2024 hurricane season.
A stationary frontal boundary, which means temperatures on either side of the front weren’t moving or being blown in any direction besides parallel to where the front is drawn on charts, alongside high pressure over the southern U.S. started to guide Milton more easterly and on its collision course with the Florida peninsula.
The lowest pressure recorded in the center of the storm was estimated to be 895 mbs, an unprecedented Category 5 hurricane. Milton officially ties with Hurricane Rita of 2005 for the fourth-lowest minimum central pressure of an Atlantic hurricane.
Hurricane Wilma of 2005 still reigns supreme for the lowest-recorded pressure in history altogether, having reached as low as 882 mbs before slamming the Yucatan Peninsula.
It was confirmed Milton was a major hurricane at landfall on Oct. 9, however analysis would suggest the core of strongest major hurricane winds was extremely tight around its center. This is especially true given the storm was ingesting tons of dry air from the south and already undergoing an extra-tropical transformation shortly into landfall.
The dry air and wind shear weakening the storm is precisely why the peninsula was dealt a prolific tornado outbreak before the hurricane was ashore.
Hurricane conditions were observed from Clearwater Beach, Tampa and southward into Sarasota and Venice, Florida. As far south as the Florida Keys, tropical storm conditions were observed during the storms impact.
Milton was a storm for the record books.
As we prepare for the upcoming 2025 hurricane season, please stick closely with your Pinpoint Weather team as we monitor for what’s to come.
Hurricane season starts on June 1.
Meteorologist Jonathan Kegges provides the latest information about everything happening in the tropics.
