Milton is the latest monster storm in a season that has defied predictions.
After several days of whirling across the Gulf of Mexico, blowing at up to 180 miles per hour, Hurricane Milton is tearing toward Florida as the terrible embodiment of a historically destructive season. Milton inflated at a near-record pace, growing from a Category 1 storm into a Category 5 behemoth in half a day, to become one of the most intense hurricanes in recorded history. The hurricane had already dispatched plenty of dangers, including at least five tornadoes, before weakening to Category 3 ahead landfall, which is expected tonight or early tomorrow morning. And the worst is still yet to come for millions of people in its path.
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was forecast to be monstrous, but what has actually happened is something more nuanced—and stranger. July began with Hurricane Beryl, a Category 5 storm that emerged much earlier than any other in history. Then, what should have been the busiest part of the season was instead eerily quiet. It was “fairly surprising,” Emily Bercos-Hickey, a research scientist at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, told me. Then, beginning in late September, came a tremendous burst of activity: Hurricane Helene, which broke storm-surge records in Florida and unleashed devastating rains far inland; a flurry of named storms that spun up in quick succession; and now Milton.
Hurricane experts are still trying to understand why the current season is so scrambled.
