Florida was still recovering from Hurricane Helene’s destruction when another hurricane hit it two weeks later. Hurricane Milton made landfall on late Oct. 9 as a Category 3 near Siesta Key, along the West Coast of Florida and South of the Tampa Bay area.
Milton caused massive rain and bands of tornadoes that spread across South Florida, destroying about 125 homes before making landfall. By Oct. 11, the death toll had risen to 16, with multiple deaths being from the tornado outbreak.
Both hurricanes, Helene and Milton, broke records. Helene was the eighth named storm this Atlantic hurricane season. Milton was the 13th. Weather experts say it is abnormal for the 13th named storm to occur this early. Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist at Colorado State University, shared updates on X on the above-average hurricane season.
1. Six Atlantic storms have formed since Sept. 24: Helene, Isaac, Joyce, Kirk, Leslie and Milton. “That’s the most Atlantic named storms on record” between Sept. 24 and Oct. 5, he posted. The previous record was four, set in 1967.
2. This is the first time on record that three hurricanes were in the Atlantic basin simultaneously after September. The other two hurricanes were Kirk and Leslie.
3. Milton is the strongest Atlantic hurricane this late in the calendar year since Wilma in 2005.
“We’re facing a compounded threat with few precedents in hurricane history, as only 1926, 1950, 2004, and 2005 saw two Category 3 or higher landfalls in Florida,” Dr. Ryan Truchelut, chief meteorologist at WeatherTiger, wrote ahead of Milton’s landfall.
“Whether or not 2024 joins that list is immaterial to the near certainty that Helene and Milton are likely to go down as one of the most devastating one-two statewide punches of all time,” he added.
Experts say the tornadoes were also unusual. The National Weather Service issued a record number of 126 tornado warnings. According to the Associated Press there were 38 preliminary eyewitness reports of tornadoes in Florida since the night of Oct. 9, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration Storm Prediction Center.
AP reported that Florida sees 50 tornadoes on average total in a whole year and that the number confirmed was expected to rise as damaged sites are assessed. AP also reported that earlier this year, Hurricane Beryl spawned 65 confirmed tornadoes, across several states.
“The most ever caused by a hurricane was 118 from Ivan in 2004. The difference is the tornadoes from Milton all came in Florida and over just eight to 10 hours,” the news service noted.
Milton started as a simple disturbance. By Oct. 5, it had strengthened into a tropical storm. Just 46.5 hours later, it was a Category 5 hurricane.
Florida Governor Ron DeSantis declared a state of emergency in 54 Florida counties ahead of the storm. The state prepared for its largest evacuation since Hurricane Irma in 2017 when more than six million people evacuated.
More than 3,000 truckloads of debris from Hurricane Helene were cleared out, as crews rushed to prevent the rubble from becoming deadly projectiles for Hurricane Milton, according to USA Today.
Georgia Governor Brian Kemp also declared a state of emergency for some Georgia counties. Parts of South Georgia were under a tropical storm watch. Cities still recovering from Hurricane Helene, such as Brunswick, Augusta and Valdosta, braced for Hurricane Milton’s impact.
Evacuees from Florida clogged the highways, as many made their way to Georgia. Gov. Kemp urged Florida’s evacuees to look to Alabama, as hotel rooms in Georgia started filling up to the metro Atlanta area.
By early Oct. 7, gas stations in Florida had already begun to run out of gas. Three days later, GasBuddy’s fuel availability tracker reported that almost 25 percent of the state’s gas stations were without fuel. The number was highest in the Tampa Bay area, with almost 63 percent of the stations emptied of fuel.
Over 3.4 million homes and businesses were without power the morning after Hurricane Milton made landfall, according to poweroutage.us.
The abnormal weather events plaguing America are written of in scripture. Allah (God) poses the question in the Holy Qur’an, “Do they not see then that We are visiting the land, curtailing it of its sides? Can they then prevail?” The Bible speaks of famine, pestilence and earthquakes in diverse places.
In his book, “The Fall of America,” the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, Eternal Leader of the Nation of Islam, warned America that God would use four great judgments—rain, hail, snow and earthquakes—to curtail her on all her sides.
“And these judgments would push the people into the center of the country, and there they would realize that it is Allah (God) Who is bringing them and their country to a naught,” he wrote in Chapter 35, titled, “America Surrounded with The Judgment of Allah,” on page 154.
“All around the Southern Border of America, storms are raging. There are tornadoes and heavy rains and more storms are on the way—one right after another.
And in the North and far West and in the East, America is surrounded with the judgments of Allah (God). There are earthquakes and the sea is raging. The Pacific Ocean is now angry and is raging and tossing up great waves as never before,” he continued.
The Honorable Elijah Muhammad posed the question, “Why should these things hit America?”
“The Revelations teach you why,” he answered. “It is because America is filled with devils and has such unclean persons living in America. That is true under the symbolism of a hateful bird.
Every filthy, slimy, wicked person comes here for a haven, where he can do any wickedness he wants to do—the country is open and welcomes that type of person.”
The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan, National Representative of the Honorable Elijah Muhammad, urged people to study Chapters 35 and 36 of “The Fall of America.” The latter chapter is titled, “Four Great Judgments of America.”
“What do you mean ‘pushing the people into the center of the country?’ He told me to tell you, and he wrote it himself, that the coastlines—all of them—will be destroyed.
And some of your own scientists are talking about ‘global warming’ and the ‘melting of the glaciers.’ This is not an ‘accident,’” he said in Part 10 of his 58-week broadcast lecture series, “The Time and What Must be Done,” delivered in 2013.
“You want to say that it’s what ‘we are doing to the environment, etc.’ And we have some responsibility. However, the God of Heaven is doing this.
And as these glaciers melt, the waters of the Pacific and the Atlantic Oceans are going to rise. And as they rise, they will overspread and destroy your borders in the East with the Atlantic coast; in the West with the Pacific coast and in the South with the Gulf coast,” he added.
“It’s happening now. But it will get worse as you continue your rebellion against God, and His Call of what you must do in order to escape ‘loss.’”
