gallopinggertie

Wow, is this the first extreme wind warning ever issued for a major city?

Yeah, it looks to be 3 or 4 hours from making landfall judging by its current speed and heading.

The difference that occurs to me is Milton is a good bit smaller than Katrina. Though NHC has mentioned several times they expect it to grow in size before making landfall. They’ve also mentioned Milton might already be beginning to make extratropical transition by the time it makes landfall, which is pretty wild.

I had the same thought, was also surprised by people saying that IKE would be really high for that reason.

Pardon my ignorance, but how common is a rainfall event like this in western Florida? I thought they were used to torrential rains from summer thunderstorms, but that does sound exceptional.

Seasonal ACE in the Atlantic is now higher than in the W Pacific!

Wouldn’t it be closer to Ian ($113 billion)? The Sarasota metro area has about the same population as the Ft. Myers area. Or are you thinking higher because Tampa will still get bad flooding even with the forecast track to the south of the bay?

NHC new track is ever so slightly shifted south, with a landfall between Sarasota and St. Petersburg.

What kind of surge would Tampa get with a landfall just to the south of the bay?

Is this the smallest cat 5 since Felix in 2007?

Yeah, wth? Apparently the hospital was built in the 1920’s - can’t believe they never decided to relocate it.

It really depends on the species. Some birds (like petrels or albatrosses) can fly for weeks at a time over the ocean without stopping! Other species without that level of endurance might not be able to make it.

I suppose that’s true. I posted a comment there urging people there to take this seriously—hopefully someone reads it and decides to evacuate. If not, well, there’s nothing I can do.

And the more it weakens, the more complacent people will be, which isn’t good.

Looking at the r/Tampa subreddit, I’m concerned. Seems lots of people aren’t taking this seriously, brushing it off because “oh it’ll just weaken to a cat 3.”

Just to the south of the bay (like by 15 miles). Would that be enough for Tampa to escape the surge?

You said “Florida will handle this with ease” though…it’s wild to make that statement confidently at this point.

And landfall right over the Tampa Bay area. At face value, that would be their worst hurricane since 1921.

Now skirts the coast from France to Denmark:

Though Kirk will be long extratropical by the time it reaches Europe, it’s cool how the last forecast point is just southwest of London, UK.

Nice opening line, lol.

I think that’s correct. And unfortunately there is a dearth of weather stations in that area—it looks like there’s no stations at all on the immediate coast between St. Mark’s and Cedar Key.

Despite weakening to Cat 1 intensity before landfall, Krathon seems to have brought impressively strong winds to Kaohsiung. There are some videos on r/taiwan of a convenience storm whose entrance got blasted in by a huge gust, as a worker tried to hold the door in. But one visitor wrote the following comment on that subreddit, which seems encouraging: “I’m an American tourist who happened to be in Kaohsiung during the typhoon. It’s clear that this is the worst typhoon this city has seen in years, since many older trees were uprooted. I am impressed by how well Taiwan responds to and prepares for these storms! I went outside as soon as I thought it was safe today, and there were already workers cleaning up the tree damage. Just as importantly, the damage seemed to be limited to trees and signs. The buildings seemed unscathed by the storm, despite this apparently being the worst Kaohsiung has experienced in a while, which means they were designed very well.”

Maybe there should be a second tier of flash flood watch for especially dangerous/unusual events.

That’s probably true, but I meant as the numbers stand at this moment.