Milton’s massive storm surge has also highlighted the growing danger posed by water. More intense hurricanes are causing higher storm surges due to rising sea levels. These “hurricanes on steroids,” as Olson nicknames them, are also dumping greater amounts of rain inland, as Helene did in North Carolina late last month. According to the National Hurricane Center, between 2013 and 2022, flooding caused by heavy rains caused 57% of hurricane deaths, while storm surges were responsible for another 11%. The wind only caused 12%.
Lakewood Park Church damaged by a tornado caused by Hurricane Milton, today, October 10, 2024 in Port St. Lucie, Florida.
Photograph: Saul Martinez/Getty Images
The International Hurricane Research Center is known for its “wind wall,” a hangar of 12 giant yellow fans that can generate winds of 157 mph (250 km/h) to test the strength of building materials. It now has a $13 million federal grant to design and prototype a new facility with 200 mph (320 km/h) fans and a 500-meter wave pool, to test the effects of windier hurricanes and humid. “It’s the real world. It’s not just wind, water or waves. You have all three,” Olson points out.
Some meteorologists think we need a completely different option. Carl Schreck, a research scientist at North Carolina State University, has proposed a category 1-5 scale based on sea level pressure to better incorporate water. Low pressure increases both wind speed and storm size, and larger storms typically have larger storm surges and more rain. A Category 5 hurricane would have a pressure of less than 925 millibars. By this measure, Milton would have remained a Category 5 until mid-Wednesday, instead of hovering between 4 and 5.
“Pressure is easier to measure, faster to forecast, and matters more for damage, but the NHC, by inertia, is tied to the current system, and believes that changing it would confuse people, unless there is a better solution.” simple. And there isn’t one,” says Schreck.
Misinformation grows as the United States prepares for Hurricane Milton, authorities warn
Experts point out that the spread of false information could generate a much more hostile environment after the passage of Hurricane ‘Milton’.
No figure reflects the impacts of the hurricanes
This was demonstrated by Helene, which made landfall in Florida as a category 4 but unleashed “biblical” rains hundreds of kilometers inland, in Georgia, South Carolina and North Carolina. The storm killed more than 200 people, half of them in western North Carolina, where mountain valleys funneled rainfall into devastating floods. The impact was compounded by a tropical storm that showered the Carolinas with historic rains two days before Helene.
Before Helene’s arrival, forecasts compared its rainfall to that of hurricanes Frances and Ivan, which in 2004 brought up to 45 cm of rain to some areas of North Carolina, causing 400 landslides and 11 deaths. “The two-day storm before Helene was described as a ‘once-in-a-thousand-year event,’ but the fact that so many people died demonstrates a communication disconnect between our storm warning system and the public,” says Schreck, who lives in Asheville and was without electricity or water for several days.
