Milton and Helene: A tale of two hurricanes
By Jared Shelton News-Press NOW meteorologist
The Gulf of Mexico has made national headlines over the past 14 days, as not one but two major hurricanes have made landfall along the Florida coast impacting millions of Americans.
First Helene in late September, then Milton in early October, resulting in loss of life and property across swaths of the southeast. While both tropical systems produced catastrophic impacts in their own right, and affected some of the same areas, the evolution and path of these major hurricanes also had plenty of nuance.
Helene, the first major Hurricane to make landfall along the Florida coast this year was nothing less than hellacious. Over the course of a few days, this system went from a tropical disturbance in the Caribbean to a major Hurricane when Helene came ashore on Sept. 26 near Cedar Key, in Florida’s “Big Bend” region; it was a monster Category 4 storm with maximum sustained winds of over 140 mph and a storm surge of nearly 20 feet at its worst. Although sparsely populated, many oceanfront communities were completely decimated by Helene within the first few hours of its landfall.
After roaring ashore, Helene continued to have incredible impacts hundreds of miles inland, bringing a massive swath of 80- to 100-mile-per-hour winds as far north as Augusta, Georgia, which lost over 70% of its tree canopy as Helene passed. Even more dire was the unprecedented flood event that took place in the Blue Ridge Mountains of western North Carolina.
A predecessor rainfall event left waterways of the southern Appalachians running high before Helene struck. By the time Helene passed, parts of western North Carolina and east Tennessee received 20 to 40 inches of rain. Not surprisingly, this washed out hundreds of miles of roads including major interstates and highways, breached dams, and carved new paths for area rivers. The Weather Channel called the Blue Ridge disaster “Katrina in the Mountains,” with well over 100 fatalities in North Carolina alone, and still many more to be counted as Helene’s total death toll continues growing past 234 people as of this week.
Then there was Milton, a major hurricane that exploded in the Gulf of Mexico earlier this week, reaching Category 5 status north of the Yucatan Peninsula as it tracked toward the weary Sunshine State. In the wake of Helene, residents of the southeast braced for Milton when it made landfall just south of Sarasota as a Category 3 storm on Oct. 9. With maximum sustained winds of 120 mph, flooding rains and a storm surge reaching near 13 feet in some locations, Milton was devastating for the west central coast of Florida. As of Thursday afternoon, the full scope of destruction had yet to be uncovered, and the death toll is at least a dozen. Several fatalities took place further inland due to quick-hitting tornadoes that spun up in Milton’s outer bands.
Milton was no doubt a major hurricane that resulted in loss of life and property, but in truth, its devastation is not as prolific as Hurricane Helene. Rather than tracking inland and impacting over five southeastern states, Milton crossed the peninsula of Florida before spinning out in the Atlantic. A one-two punch for parts of the sunshine state, that spares many still recovering from Helene’s wrath further north.
