Hurricane Milton: October 9th, Update A

With a few hours until landfall, a large region of the Florida peninsula is already feeling Tropical Storm force winds (TS range: 39-73mph) from Hurricane Milton, which extend over 200 miles from the center. Hurricane force winds are within 35 miles of the eye, and as he is about 50 miles off the coast, those winds have not yet reached the coastline. 

He is at 26.9N, 83.4W, heading NE at a very brisk 17 mph, which means he will be making landfall sometime around 9 or 10pm local time, north of Sarasota. He weakened during the day and was very asymmetrical because of the strong wind shear and also because there was dry air making it's way into the center of the storm, which caused him to weaken from that monstrous cat 5 to a cat 3. However, over the last couple of hours, the wind shear has weakened slightly and it looks like the convection has reformed around a center, so the dry air is no longer making it into the center of the storm. Officially, he is a mid-size cat 3 storm with winds of 120mph (cat 3 range: 111 - 130mph), central pressure of 948mb. 

There is a lot of very strong convection, which brings with it tornadoes as well as substantial thunderstorms. You can see these areas as the orange/red/black regions in the infrared satellite imagery:

Landfall looks like it will be somewhere north of Sarasota, but it is difficult to see where exactly relative to Tampa Bay:

Storm surge is only about 0.75 ft above normal in areas around Tampa Bay at the moment, but it is about 3 ft above normal in Fort Myers. This is because the storm is still south of Tampa - if it makes landfall to the south, the storm surge will not be too high. If it makes landfall to the north or in the Bay, then water levels will most likely rise. Surprisingly, there are no storm surge measurements available on NOAA's Tides and Currents website (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/map/index.html) between Ft. Myers and Tampa Bay, so we don't know what the levels are in Sarasota.

Be safe!

Toodle pip,

J.

Twitter (now a 'placeholder letter') @JyovianStorm

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DISCLAIMER:

These remarks are just what I think/see regarding tropical storms - not the opinion of any organization I represent. If you are making an evacuation decision, please heed your local emergency management and the National Hurricane Center's official forecast and local weather service announcements. This is not an official forecast. If I "run away, run away" (Monty Python), I'll let you know.