From NOT A LOT OF PEOPLE KNOW THAT

By Paul Homewood

Hurricane Milton made landfall 8.30EDT, just south of Tampa.

Here are the basic facts we have available from the National Hurricane Center:

So, just as I predicted yesterday, Milton only hit Florida as a Cat 3 storm, and not the monster, record breaking, once in a century, historic storm which we were told it would be, and which is even now still being reported. (To recap, hurricanes are graded Cat 1 to 5, with 5s being the most powerful).

Just check some of the headlines:

Florida has been hit by 41 hurricanes of Cat 3 strength or greater since the start of records, and in the US as a whole Milton only ranks the 75th most intense hurricane, in terms of minimum pressure.

Every hurricane can be potentially deadly, every hurricane brings damage and flooding, but there is no evidence that Milton is any more than just another run of the mill storm, either in terms of winds, rain or storm surge. Storm surge has been no more than 8ft, according to Sarasota’s mayor, which is consistent with a strong Cat 2.

As NHC notes, the highest sustained wind speeds measured were 78mph at Venice , which is on the coast only about 10 miles to the south of Siesta Key . Sarasota-Bradenton is a similar distance to the north and had only 40mph winds. They certainly cannot be called catastrophic.

This of course raises the question of why media reporting has consistently tried to portray Milton as something much worse than it actually was. As I reported yesterday, the official forecasts from the NHC have been predicting a weakening of the storm as it approached Florida for some days now.

And as is usually the case, warning intensities have been grossly overestimated in comparison with what the satellite data has been saying:

Hurricane forecaster naturally tend to guess on the top side, as they don’t want to be accused of underestimating a big storm.

But the media do not have that excuse. Partly this stems from the desire for scary headlines.

But there is definitely another motive at play here. By building up public expectations of a record, monster storm, the public then go on to believe that the film footage they see is confirmation of that.

They do not realise, and they are not told, that Florida sees hurricanes like this nearly every year.

If they want to know what exceptional really means, they should look back at hurricanes like 1926 one, which wiped Miami off the map. Or the 1928 Okeechobee one which killed 2500.

Or the most powerful US hurricane on record, 1935’s Labor Day storm, which hit the Florida Keys with winds of 185 mph and a 20ft storm surge, causing catastrophic damage there.