An interactive tracker shows the current and future path of Hurricane Milton as the deadly storm moves through the Gulf of Mexico toward Florida.
The tracker now shows Milton taking off just north of the Mexican port city of Campeche as it gathers steam on its northeasterly trajectory toward Florida’s northwestern coast.
Milton is currently producing as much as 2 to 3 inches of precipitation per hour close to the eye of the storm, building momentum and heading toward Tampa, where it is expected to make landfall Wednesday morning.
Meteorologists expect life-threatening 10-foot storm surges and winds of up to 150 miles per hour (mph) as the once-rare Category 5 storms into Florida.
As many as six million residents of the state and nearby regions are under hurricane warnings, with many ordered to evacuate, even as hubs for commercial air travel. such as Tampa International Airport plan early closures in advance of the storm.
Weather data visualization company Ventusky is actively synthesizing meteorological data to map and predict Hurricane Milton’s path of destruction with its tracker below.
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Data scientists and Ventusky representatives explained that Hurricane Milton’s forecast was “unusual” because it occurred almost parallel to the impact of Hurricane Kirk’s advancing storm front as it moves into southwestern France.
“In just 24 hours, Hurricane Milton evolved from a tropical storm to a major Category 4 hurricane,” the weather data company said. posted to their account from X.com.
“The formation is clearly visible on the satellite at night, with a cloudless eye quickly forming in the center,” the company noted in their post about the nighttime satellite video.
Meteorologists use the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale to define these storms into five categories of increasing severity.
The infamous Hurricane Katrina that devastated New Orleans in 2005 was only a Category 1 storm with winds reaching somewhere between 75 and 90 miles per hour—enough to critically breach the levees that flooded the city.
As a Category 5, Milton will be more similar to 1992’s Hurricane Andrew and 2018’s Hurricane Michael: two of the rare hurricanes to hit the United States since 1900 as Category 5, according to the National Weather Service.
As a Category 5, Hurricane Andrew destroyed 99 percent of all mobile homes (1,167 of 1,176 homes) in the Miami-Dade County city of Homestead in southern Florida.
At least 15 direct deaths and 28 indirect deaths were attributed to Andrew during the catastrophic devastation of the continental US.
Forecasters expect Hurricane Milton to be no less deadly.