Kirk and Lesie are both hurricanes, Milton forms and threatens Florida

Kirk is still a major hurricane, presently at Category 3 intensity; Leslie was upgraded to the season's 8th hurricane on Friday night, and Tropical Storm Milton formed in the western Gulf of Mexico... it's very busy out there.

Very little has changed with the forecasts for Kirk and Leslie: Kirk is still expected to bring dangerous conditions to the British Isles and France on Wednesday.  Leslie is tracking right behind Kirk but has probably peaked in intensity and is forecast to weaken in the coming days, not posing a threat to land.

As I've mentioned for a while, swells generated by Kirk will spread across the Atlantic and reach the U.S. east coast beginning Sunday... definitely something to be alert for particularly near high tides when coastal flooding is more likely.

Moving on to Milton, this has been a long-festering system in the western Caribbean and Gulf, which I first wrote about on September 27.  It was upgraded to Tropical Depression 14 on Saturday morning and then Tropical Storm Milton just a few hours later.  This is the 13th named storm of the season, and is almost certainly going to become the 9th hurricane.  (Milton is a new name on this list, replacing Michael which was retired after the 2018 season.)

Milton is located in the far western Gulf, near the coast of Mexico, and is forecast to start moving east tomorrow.  Then, fairly low wind shear and exceptionally warm water should allow the storm to intensify very quickly before reaching the Florida peninsula on Wednesday, perhaps as a major hurricane as the forecast below shows.

Remember the track forecast cone only shows an area where the center of the storm might go with 2/3 probability (1/3 chance it tracks outside the cone)... and most importantly, the cone DOES NOT show impacts which are definitely not limited to the bounds of the cone.  It's too early for watches and warnings to be issued for Florida, but when they are, the wind-related ones will be shown on the cone map, and the storm surge ones will be shown on a separate map.

Furthermore, the Florida peninsula is thin.  When a hurricane makes landfall on one side, it doesn't have a long trip to pass over to the opposite coast, so the east coast of the Florida peninsula should also be preparing for a hurricane.

As has been the case all along, the threat of multiple days of heavy rain will create problems with widespread flooding across Florida.  The graphic below shows the current rainfall outlook for the next week.

Milton will almost certainly be the 5th hurricane landfall on the US Gulf coast this year (and the 3rd just in Florida).  From my searching, it looks like there were 5 US Gulf coast hurricane landfalls in 2020 and 2005 and there were 6 in 1886.  So this is way up there in terms of rarity of impacts.

 

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