by Michael
A 15 foot tall wall of water is about to slam directly into a major American city. More than 3 million people live in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area, and hundreds of thousands of them are very tightly concentrated along the coast. Most of them are attempting to evacuate, but there are apparently large numbers of local residents that are choosing not to do so. This is very foolish, because their homes are about to be underwater. Sadly, many of those that are trying to evacuate are stuck in extremely long traffic jams. Those that run low on gasoline as they sit in those traffic jams are discovering that a lot of gas stations are already totally out of fuel. In fact, as you will see below, CNN is reporting that 1,300 Florida gas stations have now run out of gasoline, and more gas stations are going dry with each passing hour. Whether willingly or unwillingly, vast numbers of people are going to end up stuck in this storm, and the death toll is likely to be extremely high.
According to the National Weather Service, it appears that this will be “the worst storm to impact the Tampa area in over 100 years”…
“If the storm stays on the current track, it will be the worst storm to impact the Tampa area in over 100 years,” the National Weather Service in Tampa warned, adding, “Milton continues to pose a potentially catastrophic threat to parts of the west Florida coast.”
100 years ago, not that many people lived in that part of Florida.
Today, more than 3 million people live in the Tampa Bay metropolitan area.
Early on Tuesday, Milton had been downgraded to a Category 4 storm, but then it strengthened again and sustained winds were back up to 155 mph…
Milton had undergone stunningly rapid intensification Monday, its sustained winds reaching 180 mph. By Tuesday the wind speed dropped dramatically although still a fierce Category 4 storm. It climbed back to 155 Tuesday afternoon, just below Category 5 status. Fluctuations were expected as the storm closes in on Florida, said John Cangialosi, a specialist with the National Hurricane Center.
As I write this article, sustained winds are back up to 165 miles per hour, and that officially makes Milton a Category 5 storm once again.
This is a very, very unusual storm.
According to one meteorologist, Milton actually produced “more than 58,000 lightning events in just 14 hours”…
The amount of lightning in Hurricane Milton is “unlike any event” meteorologist Chris Vagasky has ever seen in the Atlantic Basin.
Hurricane Milton’s eyewall, where the storm’s strongest winds are, exhibited more than 58,000 lightning events in just 14 hours, according to Vagasky, a meteorologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
That’s more than one lightning event every second, which he described as “astounding.”
We have never seen anything quite like this before.
Of course the most dangerous aspect of this storm for those living directly along the coast will be the storm surge.
It is being projected that a 15 foot wall of water will hit Tampa like a sledgehammer, and the mayor of Tampa is warning that those that choose to stay “are going to die”…
The mayor of Tampa, a city that’s in the crosshairs of Hurricane Milton, issued a grave warning to Florida residents who don’t heed calls to evacuate ahead of the monster storm.
“If you choose to stay … you are going to die,” Mayor Jane Castor bluntly said on CNN while talking about the dangers of Milton, a “literally catastrophic” Category 5 hurricane that’s barreling toward the Sunshine State.
A Weather Channel host named Jen Carfagno used CGI to try to show her viewers what a 15 foot storm surge will look like…
Carfagno then let the simulation rise above nine feet – well above her head. The raging torrent had hit the second floor of nearby homes.
She said: ‘There are few places that are safe when the water rises this high.’
Current forecasts suggest Hurricane Milton could actually trigger storm surges of 15 feet, far higher than the frightening nine feet shown by the Weather Channel.
Most of the Tampa Bay area is just barely above sea level.
So there will be very little resistance as a 15 foot tall wall of water starts smashing everything in sight.
Thankfully, large numbers of people have decided to evacuate, but this is also creating traffic jams of epic proportions…
Highways have been jammed over the past 48 hours as over a million people evacuate ahead of Hurricane Milton, and time is running out before it’s too late to escape to safety. “Over a million” people are under evacuation orders, Kevin Guthrie, executive director of the Florida Division of Emergency Management told AccuWeather on Tuesday morning. Mandatory evacuation orders have been issued in parts of more than a dozen Florida counties. “We have more than enough shelters ready,” Guthrie said, adding that people can visit FloridaDisaster.org to find out where shelters are open in their neighborhood.
Those that didn’t fill up their vehicles ahead of time could be in very deep trouble, because 1,300 Florida gas stations are already completely out of fuel…
Gas stations in many areas of Florida are running out of gasoline, as residents prepare for Hurricane Milton.
Demand for gas has surged as some residents in Milton’s path are trying to fuel up before they evacuate. Others who plan to stay put are trying to fill gas tanks so they’ll be able to power their generators should they lose electricity for an extended period.
Gas price tracking service GasBuddy reported that as of 2 pm Tuesday afternoon, 17.4% of gas stations statewide were without fuel, a dramatic spike from just 3% on Monday. With about 7,500 stations in the state, that estimate means there are about 1,300 currently without gasoline.
There will be many that won’t be able to make it out in time due to this gasoline shortage.
Meanwhile, those that do make it out are discovering that many hotels in northern Florida and Georgia are charging ridiculously high rates…
A Marriott hotel was offering a room for two nights this week for $548 per night – or $707 for guests wanting to park their cars.
Comparatively, the same room is available in November for $94 per night.
‘Sad and inhumane,’ one person wrote.
The woman who spotted the huge price difference, Suzannah Collins, said she’d filed a complaint with the Florida Attorney General’s office.
It is morally wrong for hotels to be gouging customers like this during a major life-threatening crisis.
Those that have decided to jack up their rates should be ashamed of themselves.
Unfortunately, there are also large numbers of people in central Florida that have decided not to evacuate at all…
In Riverview, several drivers waiting in a long line for gas Tuesday morning said they have no plans to evacuate.
“I think we’ll just hang, you know – tough it out,” said Martin Oakes, of Apollo Beach. “We got shutters up; the house is all ready. So this is sort of the last piece of the puzzle.”
Ralph Douglas, of Ruskin, said he, too, will stay put, in part because he worries he would run out of gas trying to return after the storm or get blocked by debris.
Some of those that have chosen to stay will find a way to survive.
Others will not.
In the end, this is likely to be one of the most destructive storms in U.S. history.
According to CNBC, it is being projected that approximately 175 billion dollars of damage will be caused in a “worst-case scenario”…
Hurricane Milton’s once-in-a-century potential could cause damage of more than $50 billion, with the potential to leave behind devastation approaching $175 billion or more in a worst-case scenario, according to leading Wall Street analysts.
That would be on top of the carnage already left behind by Hurricane Helene, posing a potential record-breaking path of wreckage.
As I keep reminding my readers, we set an all-time record for “billion dollar disasters” last year.
This year, I think that we will set another new all-time record.
We live at a time when historic disasters just keep happening one after another, and what is ahead is going to be even worse.
This is our “new normal”, and it isn’t going to be pleasant at all.