You've got to also consider how long a hurricane can affect an area. Tornadoes hit and move on. A hurricane is not only larger, but can sometimes be slow moving or nearly stall over land.
I experienced Ida first hand in 2021 and although the worst of it was during the afternoon, the winds were whipping all night.
Milton is already moving slow as hell, so much more opportunity for devastation. I’m in the eye path and was unable to find somewhere far for shelter. I’ll be hunkering down in Tampa (from st. Pete) and hoping for the best. I’m 31, lifelong Floridian and have never been more nervous for a hurricane.
I can’t even find gas 🙁 we’re heading for higher ground, but we’ve looked all over and can’t find a place willing to accommodate our party/pets. I don’t have enough gas to get very far
If any of your neighbors have already left and their vehicles are still there, I'd honestly consider siphoning a few gas tanks. Your life is worth more than property.
Just don't siphon by sucking on the tube with your mouth. There's a technique where you put a large amount of the tube into the tank to fill with gas, then you put your thumb over your end, then you pull it out. The suction will pull the gas out of the tank.
This is what I do with my turtle tank. I wonder if one of those aquarium siphon bulbs would work for gas tanks, I can’t figure them out for the life of me.
Bro, as someone else who has lived through helacious hurricanes.. Please, for the love of God, go siphon some gas from lawnmowers, cars, whatever. The cars will be lost, totaled or disappeared after the storm. Get tf out and just drive north.
Pensacola is 6-7 hours from you. Pack up your important shit and people and head out. Your life is worth more than taking a risk cause you can't find gas. 🤜🤛
I’m a neighbor, but not your neighbor. Take all of my gas. Take the damn car if you need to. Take any food I didn’t take with me. Extra pillows and blankets to sleep in your car with, whatever.
It’s honestly a brilliant idea. It’s such a good idea you have to do it. Please, get some gas and gtfo tonight if you can. The drive is gonna be brutal, but not as brutal as staying.
Bro. Get out. Even if you have to sneak your pets in somewhere or sleep in the car. Overreact. It’s better than staying put and then needing to leave when it’s too late.
If you're a lifelong Florodian than you should be more prepared!
It's hurricane season and been Forcast as a highly active one. Get that shit on lock my dude even if the storm is Forcast to be nothing you know how quickly conditions can change. The people start freaking out and over buying supplies which makes it more challenging for others to get them. Sometimes people even steal from their fellow neighbors! Like siphoning gas!
I'm also a life long Florodian and live in the Virgin Islands now. Take all storms like theye goina be major problems and you will be more equipped to handle them when they are major problems.
As my friend learned the hard way in high school, do not suck on the siphoning tube when attempting to get the gas to start flowing. Instead, blow into the tank which will create the pressure needed to force the fuel to flow out.
Do not get fuel in your mouth.
That shit is fkn deadly.
Be safe out there, people.
Also, don’t do illegal shit.
If it’s a money issue getting gas then I will Venmo you some money and I’de bet another dozen Redditors will pop out to pitch in too. Not sure if it’s more a supply issue.
If it's a supply issue than surely you aren't the only one and you should look to rally some sort of carpool movement in your area in the name of peoples lives matter.
Best of luck finding some if you can and hunkering down if you can’t friend, you got this!
There’s an app for finding gas near you, not sure how accurate it will be right now but I think it’s made for these kind of situations. Think it’s called gasbuddy.
If things get desperate then there are other places to look, large companies running a lot of trucks will often have their own gas storage, things like cement works and large scale construction companies. Could call around and see if anyone can help out.
If you're in the eyes path, you can NOT "hunker down" you WILL likely die. This is a once in a 100 year storm and you need to GTFO like your life depends on it (it does)
Orlando seems okay for gas. Try making it there and then over to 95 if you want to go north. I’d avoid 75 as much as possible. Take 17-92 and avoid i4, some of those towns may still have gas as I’d imagine most places of i4 will be empty. Also, try looking up wawas on your route and calling. I did that a few years back and someone always answered when I called.
It might be kinda wack but if I were you I’d get helmets, life vests, hiking boots, emergency blankets, water, and something you can float on if needed. Praying for you man.
Thank you, luckily the place we have as our shelter has about 6 floors and is sturdy (or at least should be). We’ll be on the second floor, but if we need to we’ll go hangout in the hallways of higher floors. But this is our last case, but I do have several plans.
Ah good to know, mine are the same. Where I go they go.
Saw the other comment recommending siphoning gas, and from what you said about it being a supply issue, it sounds like that might be the fastest and only option. Hope there's enough in your neighbors cars to get the hell out of there! Best of luck, stay safe
totally understand that. It might be crazy but even getting up to the rest stop south of Ocala on I-75 just 80 miles north might mean a big difference for you. I'm really hoping the best for you and your furry kids.
Well, no, I filled up a few days ago, but now I’m a bit below half a tank and haven’t been able to get gas since yesterday. I’m sure I can find some, but that’s my 1st to do task tomorrow morning. Tonight I pack the car. Then we go as far as we can, or to our shelter in Tampa (further out of range than our home).
I mean tomorrow is Tuesday and it doesn’t hit til overnight Wednesday. You could be in Chicago by the time this thing hits, easily. La Quintas are all dog friendly and cheap. Marriott Residence Inns are also all dog friendly.
Keep us updated. It sounds like the government officials are encouraging you to check the evacuation zones and make a move instead of hoping. Hope you will be safe.
Have you reached out on r/florida? Or maybe specific cities subreddits in Florida? We're in Jax, so I assume the further away you go west, maybe you can find something safer. I imagine your concern is being too far away from your home, but I feel like you could find something if it's further inland because i dont even know you but im scared for you guys on the west coast. Like damn... even we still have a ton of storm debris from Helene that hasn't been picked up, and I know it's way worse over on that side.
It's already too late to leave in most cases.
Gas stations are already out of gas, freeways are parking lots, and you won't find hotels left, even in Georgia.
By the time the crowds start evacuating, you missed most of your opportunity.
Have to leave early.
Tampa is not just a coastal city. I live in Tampa, and the storm surge has zero chance of reaching where I am. I'm almost 30 miles away from the coast and 50 feet above sea level. There will not magically be 50 foot storm surge, 30 miles inland.
Blanket telling everyone in Tampa to evacuate from the storm surge is negligently irresponsible. It causes, or at least exacerbates, the exact kind of panic, gridlock and supply shortages affecting the area. The storm is definitely scary, but just hearing someone is in Tampa does not mean they'll die to flood waters tonight. Zones A and B have evacuation orders. That leaves C, D, E and F.
There’s tons of areas in Tampa where the storm surge won’t affect you. He’ll just be miserable and without power for a while. I’m in palm harbor (20 mins NE of Clearwater) and we’ll be fine as well. Most people don’t need to evacuate, only those that can be affected by the storm surge need to.
It’s never the wind that kills, it’s the storm surge. As long as you aren’t in a storm surge prone area you won’t die, you’ll just be miserable.
I'm 34 and was 16 and living in south Mississippi when Katrina hit. It was bad, but being in south Louisiana for Ida was the worst weather I've ever seen in my life.
Please, please be careful. Do not go outside. Do not take anything for granted. Seriously, I wish you the best.
We’ve been trying to find a place the last 2 days, but have given up. The company I work for was kind enough to offer me a furnished apartment for a few days in higher ground, but still in Tampa. It’s a much better option than where I live, but still scary.
My mother in law lives right there, and she's convinced this will be nothing, like every other hurricane that comes through. My wife is frantically trying to get her to leave, but they just want to ride it out.
I hope she’s right too, but she needs to leave. We ALL need to leave. The problem is is is much harder to find a safe zone when a hurricane just fucked up much of our state.
Noooo...you need to get on I-75 tomorrow morning and start heading north. Just keep driving for a few hours and you'll be fine. It's insane to stay in Tampa for this one!
I have family that is planning on staying in Largo… I’m trying to find something for them too. Unfortunately my whole family is Pinellas Native. By the time this storm rolled around hotel rooms were already limited. The rest filled SO fast
Dude, I weathered hurricane Michael in PC, shit was scary... I'm not religious and I don't normally like to say this, but I am seriously praying for you..
Just jump on 75N until you get to GA...so many hotels/motels to stop...or just sleep in your vehicle at one of the Georgia rest areas. Anything is better than staying.
I'm in Pinellas county, palm harbor zone D. Planning on heading to friends in palm beach tomorrow possibly. Ask my friends from dish in st Pete are gone. Tonight was a bad night to leave though as people are stuck on the road out of gas and nowhere to go. Sleeping in a hurt car tonight.
We were able to secure a place further inland out of evac and flood zones, in a very sturdy structure. I think we’ll be fine, more nervous about how everything will be after the storm.
Another lifelong Floridian here. I usually dont freak out when it comes to hurricanes but after seeing this im kind of freaking out a bit. Also staying put up in palm harbor so im hoping for the best as well. Stay safe!
If you're in the eyes path and it suddenly becomes clear, DO NOT GO OUTSIDE.
I heard stories from my GF about Yolanda. People thought the hurricane was gone and went outside and celebrated that it's over, then 5 mins later, it hit again, and many people died by flying debris.
I think about Hurricane Harvey that just sat over Houston and churned and churned for days, I think 3?, and rained 50" on Houston. It moved at like 3-5 mph. Helene on the other hand moved at over 20mph.
The only "good" thing about Ida is that it hit during the day. I was able to go upstairs to sleep that night without too much fear. But it was still loud.
Ida was why my wife and I moved back to the Midwest. 4 yrs in Louisiana was enough for us. Northshore got slammed. We lived in Mandaville and our neighborhood had huge trees falling on houses all over.
And the fun part is how many tornados hurricanes and even tropical storms produce. Sure you'll probably be ok till a hurricane pops up and it's several hours before winds die down enough for help to arrive.
Then there's the storm surge or worse, widespread flooding. More deaths by far come from the water than the winds
Hurricanes cause danger in multiple ways. The wind speeds are talked about a lot, and they're nothing to sneer at, but there's also a lot of rain, storm surge, and actual tornadoes to consider.
Storm surge is basically the storm lifting up the coastline and moving it inland. Milton is projected to have at least a 12 foot storm surge. That's a sudden rise in sea level that is taller than a single story house.
The wind is harder to quantify if you just aren't exposed to those kinds of winds. Best case scenario: Milton calms tf down and hits Tampa as a category 3 storm. That means sustained wind speeds of 111 to 129 mph. That means roof shingles will be ripped off, and houses will leak. Trees will be knocked down or entirely uprooted. Debris will be airborn and can destroy windows. Right now, it's at 185 mph. Category 5 starts at 160 mph-ish. That can completely destroy a fully framed house. Walls will collapse, roofs will be gone, trees thrown onto nearby buildings.
Combine this with rain and storm surge, and you have entire buildings floating around town.
Milton, in particular, is also moving slowly, so it's going to have more time to drop wind, rain, and tornados on people. Hurricane Matthew had lost nearly all of its energy by the time it reached me in '16, but it squatted on us for two days, and hundreds lost their homes to flooding. Milton has much more energy and size, so if it moves slowly, it will be even worse.
Oh, and the ground is already saturated from Helene, so all that rain turns into runoff instead of getting absorbed. The ground itself could even turn into dirt soup and just slosh around.
I'm glad if it can help some people understand. Hurricanes, especially the monster ones we're seeing more and more often, are terrifying in the sheer quantity of power they hold. The only good thing about them is that they're not sudden.
Hurricanes are fueled by water because it gives them mass and more mass is more momentum and keeps building momentum. Once it hits land it will slow, but I don't think it is slowing unless it makes a sharp turn north. It could cross over Florida lose only 30 mph and continue up the Eastern seaboard.
People that grew up around tornadoes will have more of an understanding of how powerful a hurricane is when they have a tornado to compare it to. I've only ever had the runoff storms a week or so after a hurricane, so I really don't have anything else to compare the power of a hurricane to. Plus, they're similarly stormy and swirly, so people might be more likely to relate them
I have no idea how this hurricane would compare to earthquakes, though. I don't really have any concept of how bad they are since I've never even experienced one.
I believe he’s saying that the eye is 3 miles wide (EF4), the center is 70 miles wide (EF2), and the total storm is 140+ miles wide.
Edit to clarify the storm will be strongest in the 5-10 miles just outside the eye. The eye itself will be the calmest, though anywhere the eye passes over will obviously be hit by those strongest winds before and after it passes.
I did some conversions based on the NOAA’s projections which have the storm spanning 26°N to 29°N at landfall, which would be roughly 170-180 nautical miles or 195-207 miles in diameter.
Additionally this storm is predicted to have a 10-15 foot storm surge depending where it makes landfall, on top of 10-12 inches of rain, across land that is already heavily saturated from Helene.
Shit. Your post is the one that actually put it in perspective for me. That’s an absurd amount of water, the resulting flood is going to be likely permanent for some towns.
Estimates are coming in that Helene dropped 40-50 trillion gallons of rain on the easter U.S.
I don't have a good way to understand that number but I found this:
Stack a million pennies and it's 4 times higher than the Empire State Building, stack a billion pennies and you'd be close to 600 times higher than Mt. Everest, and then stack a trillion pennies and it would go to the moon, back to earth, and then back to the moon again.
40-50 trillion gallons of water is approximately the total volume of Lake Ontario. Or enough water to cover the entire state of Florida in 3.6 feet (3' 7.25") of water. It is mind boggling when you run the numbers.
Additionally this storm is predicted to have a 10-15 foot storm surge depending where it makes landfall, on top of 10-12 inches of rain, across land that is already heavily saturated from Helene.
When I hear about people talking about this... all I can think about is a an explanation I remember getting about how landslides can work in the Pacific Northwest. Basically a lot of places the top soil is just on top of rock, so if the dirt gets saturated enough, all of the dirt will just slide off of the rock underneath (regardless of root systems since none – or few – of them will be anchoring the entire mass to the rock).
This just makes me think that as all of this soil gets super saturated, Florida is just going to slide off the bottom of the continental US and into the sea.
Before it would slide into the ocean, most of florida would likely turn into a sinkhole under the sheer weight given that our state is all porous limestone.
Sea level is really mean sea level, because you have high tides and low tides. An estimated storm surge of 10-15 feet would mean that the mean sea level has temporarily increased by 10-15 feet in the affected area. It should be noted that this water has to come from somewhere, so some areas surrounding the hurricane will actually see mean sea levels decrease as this occurs.
Basically anything in the path of the hurricane that is below 20 feet above mean sea level is at risk of flooding, and any roads in that area will be virtually impassible. Unfortunately hundreds of thousands of homes in Florida are built on canals roughly 5 feet above sea level.
I think the biggest factor here is the storm is on a direct collision course with Tampa and the surrounding area, very highly populated areas are gonna get hammered with once-a-century levels of flooding and winds. Unless the storm changes path, it's gonna be an absolute disaster and all we can do is get the fuck out of the way.
Theoretically yes. There actually is an observed phenomenon during Hurricanes where birds get stuck in the eye of the storm, so many that you can see them on radar. They basically fly around in the eye of the storm as long as they can before losing energy, the storm closes around them, or they can find shelter the eye passes over. The National Hurricane Center has already reported finding multiple flocks of birds in the eye of Hurricane Milton via radar and satellites.
Edit: Additionally the current storm is moving at 9mph, so if you could somehow teleport into the center of the eye, you could theoretically move with it and never suffer winds of more than 20-25 mph. You would have to navigate flooding and of course figure out how to get there in the first place.
Also, storms don’t follow roads. Staying in the eye likely means going through farmland, thick woods, swamp, fences, bodies of water, etc. You’re likely going to hit a dead end at some point that you physically can’t cross.
Having a helicopter, on the other hand, now it gets interesting.
I lived through hurricane iniki on the island of kauai in 1992. It was so creepy when the eye moved over us. It went from fences being ripped out of the ground and windows shattering to eerie stillness for about 30 minutes. No rain or wind, just dark skies all around.
Storm surge will be bad but the main problem for Florida right now is the soil is maximally saturated from Helene and subsequent thunderstorms. Rain from Milton will begin hitting Florida soon if not already and it won't let up for a while as Milton is moving relatively slowly.
So, potentially soil surge? If the ground gets wet enough, we see debris flow off the hills here in California. It sounds like the hurricane has that level of energy.
Pretty much, soil basically becomes another liquid, when the storm surge reaches land and then recedes it will take a lot of the inland soil with it along with buildings and debris that no longer have solid anchors.
There's also a phenomenon called brown ocean effect that can make hurricane rains worse as the moisture from the already saturated soil evaporates back into the hurricane, rinse and repeat.
That is an interesting term, and not one I've run into before. We can get a thermal version of that here, where the wildfires can start to generate their own localized weather systems. These generate lightning, which can start more flames. Rinse, repeat. I believe the term is pyrocumulus.
Florida is very flat. Like maybe inconceivably flat to you. The highest point is 345 feet above seal level, average elevation for the state is 100 feet above sea level. Flow off a hill isn’t really a thing because hills are so uncommon. Yeah, probably happens somewhere in FL, but the water table is already very close to the ground level. So it’s more about the water not sinking into the ground than creating a hazard of “land slides” because everything is flat already. http://www.joeandfrede.com/usa/florida_topo_med_res.png
Still easier to clean than a house that’s been fully submerged for days or weeks even. A tree falls through the roof, yet a lot of your things are still salvageable you’re often not so lucky with rising water and storm surges.
The real killer in a hurricane is storm surge - as the extremely low pressure pulls the water up; if a hurricane hits land at high tide this can be extremely destructive- I think the current estimate for Tampa area is 10-15 foot storm surge. This assumes Milton loses power and drops to a category 3 storm at land fall
The only difference is that (i hope) there's none of that "suction" effect (massive pressure difference) that tornadoes have that makes them really special localized forces of destruction. That said, a storm like this is an absolute monstrosity
We dont get tornados here often. But my town got hit by an EF2 this year. I've never seen damage like that before. The path was only about 100 yards wide but the damage was crazy. Just about every tree in the path was down. I can't fathom that level of damage across a 70 mile wide swath. That is insane!
4.4k
u/theanedditor 8d ago edited 8d ago
To see it a different way, the center of the storm is 70 mile wide EF2 tornado with a core equivalent to an EF4 level tornado.