JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Thousands of Floridians spent much of Monday and Tuesday creeping along the state's highways, trying to get to a safe space. That's because Hurricane Milton, what forecasters are calling a worst-case scenario, is making its way toward the west coast of the state. It is expected to make landfall in Florida on Wednesday.
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RON DESANTIS: This has the potential to be a type of storm not only that presents danger right now, not only can have serious damage but also can have kind of that indelible mark on a community.
SUMMERS: Florida Governor Ron DeSantis in a press conference earlier today urging residents to evacuate before it's too late. This could be the first time in over a century that the Tampa Bay area has been in the direct path of a major hurricane. And joining us now from Tampa is Austen Flannery. He's a meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Tampa Bay office. Hey, Austen.
AUSTEN FLANNERY: Hey. Good afternoon.
SUMMERS: So many of us have been watching the news of this hurricane. And right now Hurricane Milton is really bouncing around the wind scale. And yesterday it escalated from a Category 1 all the way to a Category 5, with, of course, 5 being the highest on the scale. How has this hurricane become so life-threatening so quickly? Can you just explain those factors?
FLANNERY: Yeah. There's a lot of variables that contribute to how a storm becomes what it is. You basically need a really good energy source, and you need an environment that is free of hostile factors that would potentially take away from the storm's ability to intensify. So where Milton is located, it's been over extremely warm waters, and the Gulf of Mexico is one of the warmest basins of water in the entire world right now. And it's been an environment where there really are no other weather systems to provide what we would call wind shear, basically a rapid change in the wind speed or direction with height in the atmosphere.
Hurricanes don't like wind shear when it comes to becoming a stronger storm because they need a very calm atmosphere to be able to rapidly intensify. So Milton has been in an environment that has allowed it to do that. Of course, that does look to change as the storm continues to move towards us, so that will mean that the storm's intensity that it's had is not really something it'll be able to maintain. But ultimately, that's - it doesn't super-matter. At the end of the day, we're still looking at very substantial impacts to the west coast of Florida.
SUMMERS: Now, Hurricane Milton is expected, of course, to make landfall on Wednesday, and there's a lot that could happen after, including storm surge, flash floods, extreme winds. Tell us. what are you anticipating?
FLANNERY: Right. So there's several different factors. I mean, the most critical, life-threatening situation for our coastal communities is the storm surge. The highest values that we're reporting right now are 10 to 15 feet. Fifteen feet of storm surge is not something that you can just ride out in your home...
SUMMERS: Right.
FLANNERY: ...Without issue. You're going to need to seek higher ground. The next one would be the wind. The problem is as Milton moves further north, it is beginning to interact with a weather system that will induce this wind shear that,] - while it does, again, ultimately mean the exact wind speed come down a little bit, the wind field expands as well. So the hurricane force wind field is going to be very large. And then finally, there is that rain piece that you mentioned as well. The flash flooding is a very serious concern. We are anticipating, especially along and north of where the center tracks, five to 12 inches of rainfall along the track with isolated totals as high as 18 inches.
SUMMERS: This is, of course, the second major hurricane to hit the state of Florida in the last week. How vulnerable is the Tampa Bay area already? And once Milton makes landfall, how much worse could things really get?
FLANNERY: So yeah. Our coastline is in a, unfortunately, very vulnerable position. With Helene, we saw a lot of our natural barrier in the way of the sand dunes being washed away. So from the perspective of the water component, there's a higher risk because the natural barriers just aren't as prevalent as they were before. The other piece that exists is that there is still quite a lot of storm debris that's present in people's yards, in their, you know, the front lawns, by the streets. That unfortunately just means there's more debris, more projectiles to be lofted into the air and to be thrown about to cause damage. You know, I think overall, you know, I, on that personal level, certainly feel - and I think many others are - it's also just exhausting to be going through...
SUMMERS: Yeah.
FLANNERY: ...Another storm so soon after that. I think we all would love to just see Milton go away, to disappear, to no longer be. But unfortunately, that's not what the forecast is at this point.
SUMMERS: Austen Flannery is a meteorologist for the National Weather Service's Tampa Bay office. Austen, thank you for your time, and please stay safe.
FLANNERY: Thank you - you as well. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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