In a broadcast on NBC 6 South Florida, meteorologist John Morales became emotional while discussing Hurricane Milton, which is expected to hit Florida’s west coast on Wednesday. The storm briefly reached Category 5 status, before its wind speeds reduced it to a Category 4 storm Tuesday morning.
“It has dropped 50 millibars in 10 hours,” Morales says, beginning to choke up. “I apologize,” he says as he takes a pause. “This is just horrific.”
Morales has decades of experience—he’s the longest tenured broadcast meteorologist in South Florida, according to NBC 6—adding weight to the intensity of this hurricane, and his forecast.
Millibars are a unit of measurement of a storm’s atmospheric pressure, and a drop in pressure indicates a storm approaching. That pressure drop also indicates a cyclone rapidly intensifying, according to the National Weather Service. By Monday night, Hurricane Milton had maximum wind speeds of 180 miles per hour. It’s expected to be the worst storm to impact the Tampa, Florida, area in more than 100 years.
Morales was also blunt about what is fueling this storm. Hurricane Milton gained strength as it moved across the Gulf of Mexico, “Where the seas are just so incredibly, incredibly hot—record hot,” he says. “You know what’s driving that. I don’t need to tell you: global warming, climate change.”
Ocean temperatures have broken records in recent years, and while El Niño is partly to blame, experts say global warming and climate change caused by our emissions underlies the change. As we put more warming greenhouse gas emissions into the atmosphere, much of that heat is absorbed by the oceans. A 2020 study explained the magnitude of change as if we’d dropped 3.6 billion atomic bombs into our oceans.
Hurricane Milton moved past Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula on Tuesday, before moving across the Gulf to Florida. In the Yucatan, Morales said, many residents have “just the basics, and it’s going to be very tough.” The storm is expected to weaken as it approaches Florida, but because it’s “so incredibly strong,” he added, “you’re going to find it very difficult to be nothing less than a major hurricane in Florida.” The storm surge where it hits could top 12 feet.
That Hurricane Milton did get downgraded to a Category 4 does not mean it is completely weakening. “While fluctuations in intensity are expected, Milton is forecast to remain an extremely dangerous hurricane through landfall in Florida,” the National Weather Service said.
Hurricane Milton comes just two weeks after Hurricane Helene caused destruction across Florida and multiple southern states, including historic flooding in the mountain town of Asheville, North Carolina. The successive storms point to the effects of climate change, as hot ocean temperatures fuel more and more storms.
Morales isn’t the only expert to emphasize the intensity of Hurricane Milton. Noah Bergren, a meteorologist with Fox 35 Orlando, took to X on Monday night to say that “This is nothing short of astronomical. I am at a loss for words to meteorologically describe you the storm’s small eye and intensity.” Hurricanes with small eyes, sometimes called pinhole eye hurricanes, generally have stronger winds and are more intense; that small eye can spin faster than a larger one. Milton is the fifth strongest hurricane ever recorded by pressure “on this side of the world,” he added. “This hurricane is nearing the mathematical limit of what Earth’s atmosphere over this ocean water can produce.”
Much of Florida’s west coast is under the hurricane warning, and 11 counties are under a mandatory evacuation (more are under voluntary evacuations). With potentially millions of people fleeing their homes, some gas stations are already reportedly out of fuel and miles-long traffic has clogged Florida highways.
Tampa Mayor Jane Castor emphasized the intensity of the storm to residents in a broadcast on CNN on Monday. “This is literally catastrophic,” she says. “And I can say without any dramatization whatsoever, if you choose to stay in one of those evacuation areas, you’re gonna die.”