Hurricane Milton Has Reshaped Storm Science Even Before Making Landfall
To predict “explosive” storms, hurricane scientists need an ocean of data to feed into newer models.
Long after the winds subside and the hard work of rebuilding begins, scientists responsible for predicting hurricanes will continue to replay Hurricane Milton over and over again. They’ll focus on how they failed to predict Milton’s sudden strengthening.
Milton became one of most the powerful hurricanes on record in the Atlantic basin after its winds accelerated by 95 miles per hour (150 kilometers per hour) on Monday, a faster jump than any storm on record other than Hurricane Wilma in 2005. That mark is nearly three times the standard definition of what scientists call “rapid intensification.” It led the normally staid US National Hurricane Center (NHC) to call Milton’s intensification “explosive.”