Consider This from NPR - Hurricane Milton's path of destruction

Episode Date: October 10, 2024

Hurricane Milton tore a path of destruction through Florida late Wednesday, leaving multiple dead and wrenching buildings apart.Many across the southeastern U.S. were still struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which hit less than two weeks ago.Now, residents and officials must again navigate the clean up rescue and recovery efforts.For sponsor-free episodes of Consider This, sign up for Consider This+ via Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org. Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

On Wednesday, Florida residents prepared for the worst. Millions of residents in Florida have been warned to prepare for catastrophic impact as Hurricane Milton closes in. Let's go live to you. This one definitely has me, has my heart in my throat. I am definitely a little scared about this one. While people across the southeastern United States are still struggling to recover from the devastation of Hurricane Helene, which hit less than two weeks ago. Hurricane Milton slammed into Florida's Gulf Coast Wednesday evening.

They are getting pummeled. It made landfall as a major Category 3 storm and siesta key heavy rain from power outage numbers are climbing as Hurricane Milton raced across Florida overnight. There are millions of people in the dark this morning. Tampa Bay did not... The day is dawning on a major catastrophe across Florida. Congresswoman Kathy Castor represents Florida's 14th district, which includes Tampa. She spoke to NPR's Michelle Martin Thursday morning about what she's seen. Raging winds, blowing rain, power lines going down. This is going to have major impacts to our infrastructure, our water, wastewater, roads, bridges. And many people across the region are still in harm's way. What we've been seeing for the past several hours is multiple rescue teams going out and

rescuing families. We have several boats out in this community. Consider this. As Hurricane Milton leaves Florida, residents and local and federal officials must again navigate the cleanup, rescue, and recovery efforts from the powerful storm. From NPR, I'm Scott Petro. Every weekday, NPR's best political reporters come to you on the NPR Politics Podcast to explain the big news coming out of Washington, the campaign trail, and beyond.

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driving your car. State of the World podcast from NPR. Vital international stories every day. It's Consider This from NPR. We are now getting more details of the damage from Hurricane Milton. For an update on the situation, I spoke with NPR's Adrian Florido. You know, it's going to take some time to really know how bad this thing was in terms of damage. Assessments are still underway. Rescue teams are also still out looking for folks who might need help. The governor said today more than 300 people had been rescued. At least five people did die, and that number is expected to rise. More than three million homes

and businesses lost power. And there were also many communities that were flooded by those rising sea levels. The storm surge that was one of the biggest concerns with Milton. What about damage to homes? You were driving around today. What did you see? There is a lot of damage across a very wide area, but its severity depends on where you are. We drove into neighborhoods today of very sturdy homes that looked to come away pretty unscathed. Others where most of the damage came from trees falling onto houses. And then some neighborhoods where heavy winds just tore homes apart. And that is something I especially saw visiting a couple of mobile home parks today. One of them I met Ernesto Rey. He's a construction worker. He'd actually been renovating his home to withstand hurricanes. The part he'd already finished did fine. The part that was still

under construction was blown away. He said everything that was blown away, he's going to have to start over. What about the hundreds of thousands of people who evacuated? We covered that evacuation for days. Are they now returning? They are. As soon as the sun rose this morning, we saw people rushing out of our hotel to get back and see how their homes held up.

A lot of people who left the region are trickling back now, too. I met Julie Bustler today. She was one of the first people back to her heavily damaged neighborhood in the city of Bradenton. I kind of took my time because I wasn't sure what I was going to see when I got to our house, you know. So when I did finally get there, I'm like, oh my God, thank you. Oh, it's just standing.

So it was an incredible feeling. And until you walk around and see some of the other ones, and then you're just saddened. So such a mix of emotions from people returning to their homes. But are there places at this point where people have not been able to get back to yet? Yeah, a lot of the barrier islands just off the coast, they were pummeled. I met Wanda Hatfield today. She was trying to cross the bridge to Anna Maria Island, where she lives. But police weren't letting people back.

So she doesn't know yet if her house survived and is anxious to get back. What am I going to see? We're going to see a lot of debris. We're going to see some water, standing water. We're going to see trees down. And I hope we see our house standing, but we'll just have to leave that up to the man upstairs. She's hoping she'll be able to get back onto the island in the next day or two,

but until then, she's staying with friends. That is Adrienne Florido in Sarasota, Florida. Thanks so much. Thank you. Millions of Floridians are without power after Hurricane Milton stormed across Florida during the early morning hours today. The storm was notable for its size and intensity as it approached Florida, which I had to say is tied to increasingly warming oceans. Prior to making landfall, one meteorologist got emotional as he reported on Milton. It's just an incredible, incredible, incredible hurricane. It has dropped

50 millibars in 10 hours. I apologize. This is just horrific. John Morales is a veteran meteorologist in South Florida, known to millions for his years with NBC6. He joins me now. Welcome. Oh, thanks, Scott. Thanks for having me here. I know you've been talking about this a bit at this point. You've had time to think about it. But can you tell us what was going through your mind at that moment. Well, I mean, as you look back on it, it's kind of humorous that I'm breaking down over millibars, right? But, you know, millibars means something to meteorologists, and 50 millibars in 10 hours means a lot. It was an impressive drop in barometric pressure. And what happened was I was about to be the lead story, of course, in the noon newscast on Monday. And just as they punched me up to be on air, the National Hurricane Center issued an urgent bulletin indicating that the hurricane had become a Category 5.

So my eyes widened. I looked at the pressure dropped. I looked at the intensity, keeping in mind that just the previous morning, it was a mundane 50 mile per hour tropical storm. And here was suddenly a 160 mile per hour category five hurricane in just the span of a day. The 50 mile millibar struck me. I think there's a lot of things, and I've done some introspection, both this occasion and also really leading up to this. I've written a lot about is how the increase in frequency and severity of extreme weather events has changed me. In other words, these are climate-driven events, and I just simply cannot be the same non-alarmist guy that I was in the 20th century. Can you just help some folks connect the dots one more time about why it is that a hotter planet, a hotter ocean in particular, is leading to more hurricanes

and more intense hurricanes? Of course, yes. So the Gulf of Mexico, where Milton was formed, is at record hot levels, both sea surface temperature and ocean heat content, the hottest it's been for this time of the year. And by the way, that has been made more likely, 400 to 700 times more likely by climate change, according to Climate Central's Climate Shift Index Ocean product, that they offer real time for us to track the changing climate. So as you have a warmer surface of the ocean, the liquid water that is there at the surface of the ocean with that higher temperature is easier to evaporate off the surface of the ocean. And with greater amounts of water vapor entering the atmosphere

and that warm and moist air becoming buoyant and rising into the atmosphere, it cools down, the moisture condenses again into liquid form, and that releases energy into a fledgling tropical storm or hurricane, increasing its intensity. And that is why hot oceans leads to stronger hurricanes. So this is happening. There's a clear track record as to why it is happening. Of course. Especially living in South Florida, you know that when that intersects with politics, there's a lot of people who just don't want to hear that, right? So how do you think about your job differently? How do you think about what changes when it comes to explaining these weather

patterns and the context they're happening in. It does not stop me. You know, I've been communicating, or let's say providing climate context to weather. I've been doing that for over 20 years. You know, is it frustrating to see that, you know, when you call for climate action, not enough has been done? And has that led up to these multiple violent hurricanes? Yes, it has. And that is peer-reviewed science. The group that you are describing, the climate dismissives, is a very small group. 10% of the survey population is a climate dismissive. However,

politicians like to play up to that tribe, to those worldviews, because those worldviews are part of a certain political sector in the U.S. And that's how you see some of the things that happen in Florida, the things that might happen in Texas, and some of the disinformation being put out there by, well, some pretty radical extreme politicians. I also was hoping to tap your expertise on one particular question a lot of us have had, and I know people have had around the country, of what is the connection between a strong hurricane coming and just the amount of tornadoes that Florida saw yesterday? That was terrifying. Oh, absolutely. And there were supercell thunderstorms linked to that, and the tornado outbreak is now being described as the biggest in Florida's history. So as hurricanes are coming ashore, their dirty side, which is

usually to the right-hand side of its motion, so in this case, it would have been on the eastern and southeastern side of the hurricane. Well, on the eastern side, we saw these first bands, outer bands of the hurricane rushing through the state of Florida from southwest to northeast, and those brought these spin-ups, which were numerous and very strong and sadly deadly in some locations. You see a lot of tornadoes with hurricanes, and generally it is on that right-hand side of its motion. It's meteorologist John Morales. John, thank you so much for talking to us. It was great to be here. Thank you. This episode was produced by Mark Rivers, Matt Ozog, Kira Wakim, and Catherine Fink.

It was edited by Jeanette Woods and Tinbeat Armious. One more thing before we go, you can now enjoy the Consider This newsletter. We still help you break down a major story of the day. You also get to know our producers and hosts and some moments of joy from the All Things Considered team. Sign up at npr.org slash consider this newsletter. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Scott Detrow. Instead of scrolling mindlessly, engage mindfully with the NPR, I'm Scott Detrow. Instead of scrolling mindlessly, engage mindfully with the NPR app.

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