ATL: MILTON - Post-Tropical - Discussion

[blueskies]

Hotel is like a ghost town now. However, a very long line of vehicles suddenly appeared on road in front leading to I-4. (Lakeland /Plant City) The Circle K gas station is open for business. The Shell station just across from it has had a big sign in the window since yesterday stating "Fuel Tomorrow", but it is dark and empty with no power. I would top off but don't want to use up what gas I have waiting in line.

[mpic]

My experience from Clearwater, just off Main street and about 3 miles from the beach was this was the strongest hurricane I've been in since Fran in 1996, The winds stayed at around 75-80mph for HOURS! I don't have a way of knowing that for sure but after going through quite a few I'd put the winds at that range and there were definitely a lot of gusts to over 100mph. Obviously I didn't have a way to record that but the damage I saw matches those types of winds. Tree's down on powerlines, Smaller structures blocks away like people's wooden sheds etc. Definitely an experience. The amount of time the wind stayed consistently high surprised me even though I'd already seen on social media to watch out for the sting jet would likely be sitting over most of southern pinellas county, was surprised those winds made it to where they did in Clearwater, not sure if it ever got as windy here in my place in Oldsmar, Power only went out for a few hours in Oldsmar but is still out in a lot of clearwater. Surprisingly 3 miles east of my location an apartment complex completely flooded out from the rain ruining probably 15-20 cars. I got out of there first thing in the morning though so the damage could have been worse in the area than the area I saw.

There were rain rates as high as 13 inches an hour in Dunedin, one of my friends there was flash flooded by 6 inches of water in his apartment that ruined the carpet his computer and everything. I'm on generator running fans to conserve gasoline. Duke hasn't given time estimates for restoration and the gas stations were out Tuesday. Texas folks know all about that routine.

I just got my first generator and because I have a 250 gallon propane tank for the house, I got a dual fuel just because of that fact. People were driving insane distances after Beryl to find gasoline and it's not safe to store the amount of gasoline that you might need.

[mpic]

I'm in extreme SETX and I feel like it would have been worse here. Heck, nearly 3 million lost power for cat 1 Beryl and that was just in the Houston area. I don't know how long the outages lasted, but for one relative it was well over a week. I can only assume they have underground power in Florida.

Some of that was Centerpoint's failure to maintain areas around lines, like trimming trees, etc. Had they been doing that as they were supposed to do the power outages would not have been as bad. I talked to linemen in from Arkansas in my neighborhood after Beryl who were kind of taken aback by just how many trees there were on lines. They said it was way more complicated to work through than they'd expected. And this was after the derecho in May when we'd had a lot of trees/limbs down and were without power for a week.

Underground lines seem to be less vulnerable to hurricanes and trees on lines but maintaining the lines and clearances around lines would help.

Thanks for the explanation. We have Entergy over here, and lose power easily in strong storms, not necessarily tropical. It's crazy to me to see how many people maintained power under such terrible conditions. For Beryl, I had relatives stay with me over a week because they had no electricity.

I have Entergy also and lost it for 5 days, but rarely do. I partially blame it on the Precinct for neglecting trees that are on the easements. Entergy does a good job of trimming but there are way too many trees that have been leaning for too long and need to just come down.

[Tireman4]

My experience from Clearwater, just off Main street and about 3 miles from the beach was this was the strongest hurricane I've been in since Fran in 1996, The winds stayed at around 75-80mph for HOURS! I don't have a way of knowing that for sure but after going through quite a few I'd put the winds at that range and there were definitely a lot of gusts to over 100mph. Obviously I didn't have a way to record that but the damage I saw matches those types of winds. Tree's down on powerlines, Smaller structures blocks away like people's wooden sheds etc. Definitely an experience. The amount of time the wind stayed consistently high surprised me even though I'd already seen on social media to watch out for the sting jet would likely be sitting over most of southern pinellas county, was surprised those winds made it to where they did in Clearwater, not sure if it ever got as windy here in my place in Oldsmar, Power only went out for a few hours in Oldsmar but is still out in a lot of clearwater. Surprisingly 3 miles east of my location an apartment complex completely flooded out from the rain ruining probably 15-20 cars. I got out of there first thing in the morning though so the damage could have been worse in the area than the area I saw.

There were rain rates as high as 13 inches an hour in Dunedin, one of my friends there was flash flooded by 6 inches of water in his apartment that ruined the carpet his computer and everything. I'm on generator running fans to conserve gasoline. Duke hasn't given time estimates for restoration and the gas stations were out Tuesday. Texas folks know all about that routine.

I just got my first generator and because I have a 250 gallon propane tank for the house, I got a dual fuel just because of that fact. People were driving insane distances after Beryl to find gasoline and it's not safe to store the amount of gasoline that you might need.

We get our first generator (Generac) Tuesday. The wild part is that we ordered it June 26th. We were told it would be three months before install. I told our salesperson; watch we will get at least one before we get the generator installed. Would you not know it, Beryl shows up. We had no electricity for five days. I was worried we might have another before it gets installed, but I think we are good. After that, who knows with the Gulf Coast.

[Xyls]

I'm very much waiting on the NWS Melbourne survey of the Fort Pierce-Vero Beach tornado. I am thinking this may become the first EF4+ tornado associated with a tropical cyclone since the implementation of the Enhanced Fujita Scale in 2007. And first F4/EF4 since 1964... some of the damage to some of the warehouses/industrial buildings are very intense. I believe they are going out to do the surveys today...

[psyclone]

I think Pinellas did well considering what could have happened. Big mess for sure not a disaster area wide and far from the big one. That's definitely more than enough excitement for me. Here's to hoping we end up back in our standard nosebleed cheap seats...watching the biggies go to LA and MS...with apologies in advance to our wonderful north Gulf coast friends.

[caneman]

I found this board about 2 years ago and have been following - cannot thank all the hardworking mets and non mets on here enough for all of the information.

I lived in Tampa for 30 + years before moving to Orlando and have so many friends and family up and down the coast from Sarasoata to Tarpon Springs and the information I gleaned for here helped them out tremendously and me here in Orlando as well.

From an observational standpoint, those north of the storm did much better than expected. Friends house in Venice survived but lost pool screen. House in Apollo Beach survived although neighbors house 3 houses down got a lot of damage. Most Tampa friends survived with one house getting a tree on it. Tarpon Springs house no water intrusion from Helene or Milton (they are very lucky)

I lost fence and a few branches in Orlando by airport with 86 mph winds but no lost power. Up north by Lake Mary/Sanford, lots of flooding with Heathrow golf course under water.

Thanks again everyone !

That isnt case for much of southern Pinellas. .we got the worse of the wind. . Alot of down trees on power lines. Southern Pinellas got severe winds from the Northern eyewall and significant flooding. Some of my neighbors seawalls got destroyed from the yards slipping aways from torrential rainfall

[toad strangler]

My weather station pressure signature of Milton’s passage from Port St. Lucie (West)

[johngaltfla]

Welp, I am back with power and internet again. To say the southeastern eyewall was noisy is an understatement. And that has to be one of the biggest eyes I've been through in my lifetime. The backside of Milton really finished off the weakened trees and structures. Sarasota is a huge mess, but we'll be back. The keys however are going to take longer to rebuild.

[johngaltfla]

Is Milton also the strongest storm to strike Sarasota or anywhere this close to Tampa?

I think the Sarasota/Bradenton airport broke a record for the strongest winds ever recorded since the station was placed there in the 1970s, from a post a pro-Met wrote on X.
It would probably would go way back if the station was older.

Since it tore the roof off concourse B and deposited it on the runway I think they would agree. They could probably check the records from the military aviation as it was a base in WW2 and we did have the 1944 Hurricane.

[ljmac75]

Drone video of Tropicana https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/milton-shreds-roof-tropicana-field-home-baseballs-tampa-bay-rays-rcna174808

Was the roof there really only rated for 115 mph winds? That doesn't seem very high for a tall structure near the coast.

[canes92]

Lost power here around 10 pm Wednesday night and just got it back about an hour ago. I remember around 1 am on Thursday, the winds were 67 mph in my area and the storm had already passed and was to the NE of me. I think we were in the bottom edge of the eye.

[Xyls]

The Fort Pierce tornado has been given a preliminary rating of EF3 and is subject to change upon further surveying. Usually to get an EF4 rating or higher they have to call in other surveyors to review and it looks like this may be what they are doing here. I think an EF4 rating is likely. If this happens this will be only the 2nd EF4/F4 tornado ever in Florida with the only other one occurring in 1966. Although there is also a disputed F4 from 1958 in Florida as well...

[syfr]

And this, my friends, was the storm of the year.

[Ubuntwo]

The aerial damage viewer for Milton is now available:
https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/milton/index.html

The worst wind damage appears to be on Anna Maria Island/Bradenton Beach, where many roofs have been torn off including the partial collapse of some apartment buildings. I have yet to see much coverage of the damage in this area. The most severe surge is from Venice to Manasota Key.

[emeraldislenc]

How can you view the imagery?

[Travorum]

The aerial damage viewer for Milton is now available:
https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/helene/index.html

The worst wind damage appears to be on Anna Maria Island/Bradenton Beach, where many roofs have been torn off including the partial collapse of some apartment buildings. I have yet to see much coverage of the damage in this area. The most severe surge is from Venice to Manasota Key.

That link is for Helene, I was wondering for a second how my umbrella got back upright

Here's the link for Milton:
https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/milton/index.htm

[Ubuntwo]

The aerial damage viewer for Milton is now available:
https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/helene/index.html

The worst wind damage appears to be on Anna Maria Island/Bradenton Beach, where many roofs have been torn off including the partial collapse of some apartment buildings. I have yet to see much coverage of the damage in this area. The most severe surge is from Venice to Manasota Key.

That link is for Helene, I was wondering for a second how my umbrella got back upright

Here's the link for Milton:
https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/milton/index.htm

Whoops! Copied the link from the wrong tab. It's really instructive to go back/forth between the two to see what damage was caused by which storm.

[johngaltfla]

The aerial damage viewer for Milton is now available:
https://storms.ngs.noaa.gov/storms/milton/index.html

The worst wind damage appears to be on Anna Maria Island/Bradenton Beach, where many roofs have been torn off including the partial collapse of some apartment buildings. I have yet to see much coverage of the damage in this area. The most severe surge is from Venice to Manasota Key.

I was down in Venice yesterday and it was a huge mess. I can verify that.

[REDHurricane]

Drone video of Tropicana https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/milton-shreds-roof-tropicana-field-home-baseballs-tampa-bay-rays-rcna174808

Was the roof there really only rated for 115 mph winds? That doesn't seem very high for a tall structure near the coast.

Lol have you ever been to a game there? Now that the Coliseum is out of the picture, the Trop is inarguably the worst, most poorly designed park in the entire MLB -- it wouldn't surprise me at all if the roof itself was also poorly designed