Hours before the powerful Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida, a spate of unusually strong and long-lived tornadoes touched down across the state, flipping tractor-trailers and ripping off roofs.
The twisters surprised anxious residents, even as the storm’s eye still loomed. Authorities said there had been “multiple” deaths after the intense and destructive tornadoes.
The tornadoes, triggered by Hurricane Milton, have caused significant chaos and danger.
As of the latest reports, there have been multiple fatalities in St. Lucie County, particularly in the Spanish Lakes Country Club area. Search and rescue teams are actively working through numerous affected areas to assess the damage and assist those in need.
The twisters surprised anxious residents, even as the storm’s eye still loomed, and they added a sense of chaos and danger to the final hours of storm preparation, including along parts of Florida’s Atlantic coast far from expected landfall, where residents were not expecting to see storm impacts until late Wednesday night or early Thursday — if at all.
In what may prove to be some of the first fatalities from Milton, St. Lucie County Sheriff Keith Pearson said there had been “multiple fatalities” after a tornado struck Spanish Lakes Country Club around 4:30 p.m. eastern, but was not able to confirm how many as of late Wednesday. Search and rescue crews were poring through “dozens” of tornado-struck areas before Milton’s core arrived, said Erick Gill, a county spokesman.
“I’ve worked here for 21 years. I’ve been through multiple hurricanes, tropical storms, including Frances and Jeanne 20 years ago, which impacted our area greatly and had multiple fatalities,” Gill said. “And this is going to exceed those storms.”
Authorities said there had been “multiple” deaths after the intense and destructive tornadoes as Milton, a Category 2 hurricane, made landfall near Siesta Key, FL around 8:30 pm this evening.
Authorities advised residents to stay sheltered in place, as increasing winds and the potential for flash flooding continued overnight.
Most of the southern half of the state found itself under a tornado warning at least once Wednesday afternoon, and in some cases, many times: The National Weather Service issued at least 98 tornado warnings across the state between noon and about 6 p.m., as some 19 tornadoes touched down, according to Gov. Ron DeSantis.
Meteorologists had warned long before Milton’s approach that tornadoes could be among the storm’s four chief hazards, along with damaging winds, flooding rains and storm surge.
However, even experts did not foresee the severity of the tornado outbreak — which could end up being one of the most active on record in the tornado-prone state.
“Normally you only get a couple of these hazards,” Jamie Rhome, director of the National Hurricane Center, told CNN. “To get all four like this, to converge, is truly unusual.”
While tornadoes are common hazards at the fringes of tropical storms, it is unusual for a hurricane to spin up so many damaging and long-lived cyclones.
“Typically the stronger the hurricane is when it makes landfall, the more likely it is to see tornadoes from the outer bands,” said Jana Houser, an atmospheric scientist at Ohio State University. “This does seem to be on the high end of what one might expect for warnings in a hurricane.”
Tornadoes downed trees and damaged fences and patios across Martin and St. Lucie counties, and flipped a truck on Interstate 95 in Martin County, the Weather Service said. One passed directly over an airport in West Palm Beach, where a wind gauge reported a 92 mile-per-hour gust — a level that could mean it was at least an EF-2 tornado.
Multiple twisters prompted the Weather Service to warn of a “particularly dangerous situation,” a label they apply only rarely, when long-lived, strong and violent tornadoes are possible.
“You are in a life-threatening situation,” a tornado warning issued at 2:17 p.m. said. “Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be destroyed. Considerable damage to homes, businesses, and vehicles is likely and complete destruction is possible.”
On Florida’s west coast, where residents were bracing for the storm’s impact, a tornado damaged the Lee County sheriff’s office in Matlacha, according to the Weather Service.
Videos and news reports shared on social media showed significant tornado damage to homes and businesses in Fort Myers. One photo showed wood, cement and other materials scattered across the yard of a small home that was barely standing.
Robert Haight, a Fort Myers resident, told AccuWeather that he was looking through a hole between barriers covering his house’s windows when he saw the tornado. Moments later, Haight told AccuWeather, he heard glass cracking and saw the tornado tear away his roof.
“I felt the thing suck me up,” Haight told the weather media company. “And I grabbed my kid and my wife and hunkered down.”
Video showed furniture, wood, clothes and other items scattered around Haight’s roofless house.
Social media footage also showed toppled signs at a 7-Eleven and fallen trees and light poles in the roads.
How hurricanes spawn tornadoes
Tornadoes are a relatively common threat as hurricanes transition from water to land. As a hurricane passes over water, it glides over a frictionless surface. Winds are uniform in speed and direction throughout the height of the storm, Houser said.
But as the storm’s outer bands make landfall, encountering trees and buildings, tornado risks rise.
As those obstacles slow winds closer to the ground, faster winds overhead cause the air to rotate vertically, like a pinwheel. Fast-rising air in thunderstorm clouds in the outer bands of a hurricane can then cause that rotation to shift sideways, spinning it like a frisbee and creating a tornado. Stronger updrafts can cause the tornadoes to spin faster, intensifying them and their potential for destruction.
Tornadoes typically develop in a storm’s right front quadrant, where winds are moving in the same direction as the storm’s motion. This is also the area where storm surge — a deluge of ocean waters over normally dry land — is the worst.
This tornado outbreak may have also had additional fuel from nearby strong winds over Florida, not associated with Milton. Houser said the winds about 3 to 5 miles above the ground helped promote rotating storms, which provided the vigorous upward motion to generate the necessary rotation for the tornadoes.
The combination of those winds with the updrafts within the storm itself was “like the golden ticket” for strong tornado activity, Houser said.
A rare event, even in Florida
Preliminary reports suggest the outbreak is likely to rank among Florida’s top tornado outbreaks.
Twice in modern history, 22 tornadoes have touched down in the state on a single day: Apr. 23, 1997, and June 24, 2012, during a storm named Debby.
Florida’s deadliest tornado outbreak in modern history occurred in February 1998, when nine overnight tornadoes killed 42 people.
This year is likely to end up as a historic one for hurricane-spawned tornadoes in the United States.
Other hurricanes this year were also prolific tornado producers, including Helene last month and Beryl in July. Hurricanes Debby and Francine, with similar origins, also dropped a number of twisters.
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