Hurricane Milton upgraded to a Category 5 on AccuWeather RealImpact™ Scale

AccuWeather

Hurricane Milton has been upgraded to Category 5 on AccuWeather's RealImpact&trade; Scale. It will threaten Florida with 150-mph winds, storm surge and flooding. Jon Porter provides updates. Stay safe!

Transcript

00:00Our Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter, John, map discussion just wrapping up just a few moments ago.

00:07Breaking weather news, we have decided to do something here at AccuWeather.

00:12We've only done a handful of times since instituting the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale for hurricanes.

00:19That's right. AccuWeather's team of experts, we've just met, looked over all the data.

00:23We've decided to make Milton a Category 5 on the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale for hurricanes.

00:30We talked about this all morning long, that this was under consideration.

00:34And we've decided to do that because we are concerned about a catastrophic storm surge

00:39to heavily populated areas that can forever alter the coastline across parts of the western portion of the Florida coastline.

00:48For Tampa Bay, Bradenton, Sarasota, we're expecting that there can be widespread catastrophic damage from that storm surge.

00:56A very life-threatening situation, which means that the storm gets the highest rating on the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale for hurricanes of 5.

01:05And John, we made the decision based not solely on Tampa, but heavy populated areas even south of Tampa,

01:13toward Sarasota, toward Bradenton, Siesta Key, where Bill Waddell was reporting this morning.

01:18And the key is, while this storm may come far enough south that the worst conditions wouldn't be in Tampa,

01:24or it could be just north of Tampa that would include in Tampa,

01:27there's a large enough population in harm's way because of this storm surge that we decided to go with that decision.

01:35Am I correct in that?

01:36That's a great characterization.

01:37And we want to urge, this is an extremely life-threatening situation with regard to that storm surge.

01:44It's such an unusual historic track that's going to become one of the most costly and damaging hurricanes that Florida has experienced.

01:53And that's another reason that we're rating the storm at this high level on the AccuWeather Real Impact Scale.

01:58Now, we also want to point out, though, there is a way out with this in terms of that the impact could be less.

02:05So if the storm does make landfall a little bit further to the south, away from Tampa, away from Sarasota and Bradenton

02:15and some of those really densely populated areas, then thankfully the storm's impact from a financial perspective would be less.

02:24And so we want to identify that that is a risk as it relates to this.

02:28But we are very concerned about the damage being catastrophic in some of those large, densely populated areas.

02:36And that's why we made the decision we did.

02:38All right.

02:39AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist Jonathan Porter again.

02:41Breaking news, AccuWeather.

02:43We've only done this a handful of times.

02:45We are now making Hurricane Milton a five on the AccuWeather Real Impact for hurricanes.

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