As if they didn’t already have their hands full with the hurricane, residents of several Florida municipalities were hit by tornadoes hours before the passage of Milton. We explain why the two weather phenomena overlapped.
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“A record number” of tornadoes declared Wednesday in the wake of the passage of the hurricane Miltonreports NBC News. At least 19 have been confirmed, said Florida Governor Ron DeSantis.
Several occurred in St. Lucie County, on the state’s eastern coast, killing at least four people at a mobile home park where elderly residents reside.
Other tornadoes were also seen in Fort Myers on the west coast, near where the center of the hurricane passed. Milton.
It is “relatively common” for tornadoes to form when there is a hurricane, “because hurricanes will usually also contain thunderstorms,” explains Environment Canada meteorologist Michelle Fleury in an interview with 24 hours.
“These are very unstable systems (hurricanes), which contain a lot of moisture. Thunderstorms develop mainly in the outer rain bands of the system, on the flanks. They can become violent and produce tornadoes,” she adds.
These tornadoes most often occur on the front right side of the hurricane, continues the meteorologist, where we find the most wind shear and instability. They can still occur anywhere, “even near the eye, in the more internal parts” of the hurricane, she specifies.
Basically, “as long as we know that a hurricane contains interlocking storms, that lightning is detected, there can be all the types of phenomena that we can expect with thunderstorms,” summarizes the meteorologist.
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Are these tornadoes more intense?
Many of the tornadoes seen in Florida, Georgia and South Carolina are caused by hurricanes.
These tornadoes are generally less intense than those that form in the “Tornado Alley» (tornado alley), an area that extends mainly from South Dakota to Texas, explains Michelle Fleury.
“Tornadoes produced by hurricanes do not have the potential to become very strong like F5 (on the Fujita scale, Editor’s note), unlike those typically found in (Tornado Alley),” she explains.
We do not know the classification, therefore the intensity, of the tornadoes which formed during Milton.
— With information from AFP, NBC and the Associated Press
