Within just over 24 hours of forming in the Gulf of Mexico on Oct. 6, Hurricane Milton grew from a Category 1 hurricane to a Category 5, the most powerful class of storms. It was a jump in wind speeds of more than 153 kilometers per hour (95 miles per hour) in a day. This rapid intensification was likely fueled by climate change-linked warming of the Gulf waters, scientists say. Milton’s explosive growth places it in a category of storms that didn’t exist before climate change put a thumb on the scale for hurricanes. “Extreme rapid intensification,” is the term meteorologists now use for storms that increase in wind speed by at least 56 km/h (35 mi/h) in a 24-hour period. Milton grew more than twice as quickly. “This is a relatively newer term. We didn’t have a term for this before because we didn’t see storms extremely rapidly intensify just a couple decades ago,” Shel Winkley, a meteorologist and weather and climate engagement specialist with Climate Central, told Mongabay by phone. Milton is the 40th Atlantic hurricane to meet the new designation since 1980. The other unusual thing about Milton is where it formed. Typically, big hurricanes, like Katrina in 2005, form off the coast of Africa and gain energy as they move west across the Atlantic. But Milton was formed entirely within the Gulf, just two weeks after Hurricane Helene passed through the same body of water. All hurricanes form over the ocean and are fueled by warm seawater.…This article was originally published on Mongabay
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