By Anders Lorenzen

When Hurricane Helene made landfall in the Big Bend region of Florida on the 26th of September with over 200 casualties and over $40 billion in damages, it became not only the most damaging hurricane to hit in 2024 but also the most impactful to make landfall in the US since Hurricane Katrina in 2005. 

As people in its path have not yet recovered and the clean-up operation is in its early stages, it has to be put on pause as an even more powerful storm, Hurricane Milton is preparing to make landfall on Wednesday night and Thursday morning. 

Hurricane Helene caused storm surges in the region of reached 2.94m, but the prediction is that Milton will produce even greater storm surges at 4.5m, this increase will likely create far more damage.

Don’t mention climate change

What concerns local and national authorities is whether people who are in the evacuation zones will follow the evacuation orders. Authorities have warned people who are in an evacuation zone, that failure to evacuate will mean death. How huge the casualties will be will of course be determined by how many who take the warnings seriously and get out while they can. 

The Governor of Florida, Ron DeSantis said: “Hurricane Milton is heading our way. There is high confidence this hurricane is going to punch a major, major punch and do a lot of damage.” 

Unsurprising DeSantis, one of the Republicans who unsuccessfully challenged Donald Trump to be the Republican 2024 presidential candidate has not mentioned climate change when giving updates about the climate-fuelled monster storm. The Republican has despite of climate-impacted storms time after time hitting the state, continued to flatly deny climate change while taking donations from the fossil fuel industry.

But the science is pretty clear. On Wednesday, Florida meteorologist John Morales became emotional and had to fight not to cry when on live TV discussing the impacts of Milton and what has led to this, saying because of climate change the waters are incredibly warm for this time of year, allowing these monster storms to develop.

The scientific group, The World Weather Attribution analyses the role climate change plays in extreme weather events today unveiled its Hurricane Helene findings that due to above record-hot sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were the perfect recipe for this storm to develop into such a beast, the story is likely to be similar when it comes to Milton. Global mainstream news outlets have on this occasion not been shy to link the event to climate change.

And if denying climate change is not bad enough, 100 Republicans recently voted against a bill that would increase the budget to the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) who’s tasked with providing disaster relief.

Nearly 100 Republicans voted against a government funding bill in the heart of hurricane season.

Story: https://t.co/u9o4V6zPSn pic.twitter.com/NVCHE9RU23

— Rolling Stone (@RollingStone) October 9, 2024

Milton has interchanged between Category 4 and 5, but it is estimated it will land as 4 – that does not make it less damaging as it is predicted to be a lot more widespread, covering a large area. 

Milton is the fifth named hurricane to make landfall in the US in 2024.