Hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall on Wednesday, several powerful tornadoes ripped through Florida, ripping off roofs, overturning vehicles and sucking debris into the air as the black V-shaped columns moved through them.
Deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic coast, but local authorities did not indicate how many residents had died.
As of Wednesday evening, more than 130 tornado warnings associated with Milton had been issued by the National Weather Services offices in Florida.
The occurrence of tornadoes before and during hurricanes is not unusual, scientists say, but the ferocity of the tornadoes was.
“It’s absolutely extraordinary,” said Victor Gensini, professor of meteorology at Northern Illinois University. “Hurricanes produce tornadoes, but they are usually weak. What we saw today was much closer to what we see in the Great Plains in the spring.”
Tornadoes spawned by hurricanes and tropical storms most often occur in the right front quadrant of the storm, but sometimes they can also occur near the storm’s eyewall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The heat and humidity present in the atmosphere during such storms and changes in wind direction or speed with height, known as wind shear, contribute to their likelihood.
“There’s an incredible amount of vortex going on,” Gensini said of the conditions that allowed the twisters to grow. “Those tornadoes were just in a very favorable environment.”
Warming oceans due to climate change are making hurricanes more intense, but Gensini said he was not aware of any connection between human-induced warming and the deadly tornadoes Florida residents experienced with Milton.
About 12.6 million people in the state were facing potential exposure as of Wednesday evening due to a tornado advisory from the National Weather Service.
Videos posted to Reddit and other social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighborhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.
Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said he wasn’t sure whether Milton had spawned a record number of tornadoes, but he pointed out that only 64 tornado warnings in Florida were associated with Hurricane Ian, which hit Tampa Bay. area as a huge storm in 2022.
Florida has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state. But they are usually not as severe as those in Midwest and Plains. However, a major outbreak of powerful tornadoes killed 42 people and injured more than 260 in a few hours in Central Florida in February 1998.
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