Hurricane Milton Hits Florida As Category Three Climate Reality Storm

Stay safe out there.

Video screenshot, NBC Today on YouTube

Hurricane Milton blasted across the Florida peninsula late last night, coming ashore from the Gulf of Mexico as a Category 3 storm at Siesta Key, roughly 70 miles south of Tampa. The storm, intensified by warm waters in the Gulf due to climate change, caused widespread wind damage and flooding as it tore across Florida, causing at least nine confirmed deaths and leaving more than 3 million customers in the state with no electric power.

Even before it arrived, the hurricane spawned multiple tornadoes in the southern part of the state; four people were killed by a tornado in St. Lucie County.

St. Petersburg’s water and sewer systems were also temporarily shut down overnight, although Mayor Ken Welch said they were up and running again this morning. Even though water is coming out of the taps, residents are advised to boil it before use.

Some good news: The eye of the storm passed to the south of Tampa, so the city avoided the worst-case scenario of a 10- to 15-foot storm surge from Tampa Bay. Even so, Gov. Ron DeSantis told reporters that “Isolated pockets of up to 18 inches of rainfall were observed in Pinellas and coastal Hillsborough counties,” causing flooding and knocking out electricity. In an early-morning briefing, Tampa Mayor Jane Castor cautioned that flood danger in the area was still quite real: “It’s not over,” she said. “At 7:00 this morning when high tide comes in, rivers are going to flood all over Hillsborough County, not just in the city of Tampa.”

The storm also ripped most of the fiberglass and Teflon roof off of Tampa’s St. Petersburg’s Tropicana Field sportsball stadium, which before the storm had been designated to serve as a base camp for as many as 10,000 first responders and cleanup workers. Fortunately, the stadium had only a few workers in it when the roof tore off, and there were no reported injuries there. Here’s video from NBC’s Today Show:

President Joe Biden warned folks in Florida to please stay inside and safe as the storm system blows into the Atlantic and disaster cleanup gets going. In a message on Twitter, Biden said

To everyone impacted by Hurricane Milton: I urge you stay inside and off the roads.

Downed power lines, debris, and road washouts are creating dangerous conditions.

Help is on the way, but until it arrives, shelter in place until your local officials say it’s safe to go out.

Idiots with blue checkmarks replied by calling Biden a liar, wishing he’d done anything at all following Helene, and telling Biden to fuck off because Gov. Ron DeSantis is in charge and he actually cares about Floridians. DeSantis has in fact already spoken on the phone with Biden, and told the president that the state is still assessing damage after the storm. Politico also points out that FEMA Administrator Deanne Criswell “participated in the call and will be surveying impacts in the state with DeSantis,” so please take your MAGA “FEMA is doing nothing!” whines elsewhere.

Also, because idiots gonna idiot, inexplicably influential MAGA Twitter Troll “Catturd” suggested that there just had to be something very fishy and conspiracy-related in the fact that the winds of a hurricane don’t blow at a constant speed all the time, leaving his idiot followers to conclude it must be Woke Government Weather Control maybe. Here’s a screenshot that won’t make that asshole any money.

At least Twitter users added a “community note” pointing out that “Hurricanes, like other weather phenomena such as temperature and wind, are dynamic and can change due to a variety of factors” and explaining what those factors were. Yeesh. I am no science fiction weather expert, but I think a massive storm system that maintained a constant wind speed would be proof of a scary artificial wind machine, no?

Finally, Florida being Florida, Florida’s top disaster guy warned Florida Man and Florida Woman not to do something stupid like cut live power lines or other cables they might want to scavenge from the debris. Literally:

“Do not cut any lines again. Again, we do not need Florida man and Florida woman out there cutting random lines as they go,” Division of Emergency Management Executive Director Kevin Guthrie told reporters.

“You don’t know what is a cable line. You don’t know what is an electrical line and, probably more importantly these days, you don’t know what is a fiber optic line. Most of our 911 lines run across fiber optic. We do not want anybody cutting lines. Let the professionals come in here and identify what it is before it’s cut.” 

We’ll continue to bring you more information as it develops, and we hope all our own Florida Men and Women are doing well! Don’t touch the cables!

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[AP / Politico / NBC News / CNN]

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