Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 hurricane late Monday morning.
Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.
Milton now ranks as the third-greatest 24-hour wind speed intensification for a hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. (Records are based on data since the satellite era began in the 1960s.)
That’s probably why everyone is super split on the landfall category of the hurricane.
That should play an impact and overcast and heavy rain should make for a less welcoming Florida.
However we have seen that shallower waters by the coast have been very very hot lately and do a lot to bump up hurricanes as they near the shallows and it could intensify the storm again as it nears land.
Tampa doesn’t get hit directly by storms and they don’t generally form to category 5 hurricanes in about 12 hours in the gulf of Mexico so there is a lot of new science and prediction work to be done here so it’s a lot of guessing till it does.