Marco Rubio: Hurricane Milton forecast ‘almost identical’ to worst-case storm scenario

U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio says the forecast for Hurricane Milton’s path and impacts are a dead ringer for a worst-case scenario he requested a while back.

Hurricane Milton strengthened rapidly Monday from a Category 2 storm to Category 5 strength, with sustained winds at 175 mph, within a matter of hours.

Posting a National Hurricane Center map of peak storm surge expectations to X at 2:30 p.m. that showed flooding of between 3 and 12 feet across the entire Gulf Coast and the Keys, Rubio provided a chilling outlook.

“Several years ago, I asked (the National Hurricane Center) to show me what the worst case storm hitting Florida would look like,” he wrote. “What they showed me back then is almost identical to the #Milton forecast now.”

Milton is on a collision course with the Tampa Bay area, threatening deadly flooding there and across the same stretch of coastline that Hurricane Helene swamped less than two weeks ago.

Gov. Ron DeSantis on Monday urged localities to clear debris still sitting in the open after Helene to clean the messes up before Milton strikes. The storm could come ashore Wednesday, and its forceful winds could sweep up loose pieces and turn them into projectiles that could cause more damage and add to the at least 230 deaths due to Helene.

Milton’s intensification in wind speed by 92 mph (148 kph) in 24 hours trails only those of Hurricane Wilma in 2005 and Hurricane Felix in 2007. One reason Milton strengthened so rapidly is its small size, with a “pinhole eye,” just like Wilma’s, said Colorado State University hurricane researcher Phil Klotzbach.

The storm likely will have to go through what’s called an eyewall replacement cycle, a natural process that forms a new eye and expands the storm in size but weakens its wind speeds, Klotzbach said.

The Gulf of Mexico is unusually warm right now, so “the fuel is just there,” and Milton probably went over an extra-warm eddy that helped goose it further, said University of Albany hurricane scientist Kristen Corbosiero.

The hurricane center forecasts a slight weakening before landfall in Florida. The last hurricane to be a Category 5 at landfall in the mainland U.S. was Michael in 2018.

___

Material from The Associated Press was used in this report. Republished with permission.