- December 21, 2024
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One flooded entire neighborhoods. Another moved piles of debris and trees and caused tornadoes across Florida. A third, though recently out of the spotlight, produced record rainfall.
Recently, hurricanes Helene and Milton hit the Suncoast in two very different ways, and both came in a matter of two weeks. Many areas around Longboat Key and Sarasota and Manatee counties are still recovering from what officials have called historic storms.
For Climate Adaptation Center (CAC) founder Bob Bunting, walking around Longboat Key after Hurricane Milton was personal. Bunting lived on the island for years before moving to Sarasota while focusing on the CAC.
“It’s so devastating to see it,” Bunting said while talking about seeing his former neighborhood on the north end of the island.
Bunting and his staff at the CAC have decades of experience in storm forecasting, and the combined experience is “second to none,” he said. According to him, the CAC predicted that the eye of Hurricane Milton would traverse through Sarasota before any other forecasters.
This would later become a reality as Hurricane Milton’s winds caused massive damage to vegetation and structures.
Using his experience and knowledge of the area, Bunting dissected how the hurricanes differ, and how their intensity signifies the impacts of climate change.
Bunting said hurricanes are like people. Every person is a person, but everyone is unique, just like hurricanes.
“Each one of these storms had a different personality, and with each one of them lessons to learn,” Bunting said.
When looking at this hurricane season as a whole, not just the past month, the Atlantic hurricane season was active starting with Hurricane Debby. From Hurricane Debby to Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Bunting said this season presented a “hat trick” of hurricanes.
In terms of the projected outcome and strength, each one was worse than the one before it, according to Bunting.
First was Hurricane Debby, which made landfall in the Big Bend of Florida as a Category 1 hurricane on Aug. 1. When it swept past the Sarasota area, it was a tropical storm. Still, it brought up to 18 inches of rain within three days.
This excessive rainfall caused stormwater and wastewater systems to become overwhelmed, leading to overflows into local bodies of water. Areas like St. Armands Circle, low areas of Longboat Key and some parts of Sarasota also experienced flooding.
Hurricane Debby’s personality is classified as a huge rain event, Bunting said.
Then came Hurricane Helene, which made landfall, again in the Big Bend, as a Category 4 hurricane on Sept. 26. As it passed Longboat Key, the storm was 130 miles away and intensifying.
Although Longboat Key didn’t suffer from a direct hit, the island experienced catastrophic impacts from the hurricane’s storm surge. According to the latest estimates, Town Manager Howard Tipton said Longboat Key likely saw between 5.5 and 6 feet of storm surge from Hurricane Helene.
The result was flooded homes, some beachfront properties completely destroyed and sand that covered Gulf of Mexico Drive after the water receded back to the Gulf and bay.
Hurricane Helene’s personality would be classified as a storm surge threat, and Bunting said this storm shows the impact major hurricanes can have from far away.
“They don’t even have to strike directly to cause havoc,” Bunting said. “They can be 100 miles away.”
Most recently, Hurricane Milton made landfall near Siesta Key on Oct. 9. This storm was a major wind event, Bunting said.
When officials were looking at Hurricane Milton’s track the days leading up to landfall, it seemed to be a Category 4 or 5 hurricane heading for Longboat Key. Storm surge projections estimated that Longboat Key would have faced up to 15 feet of surge, which Tipton said would have been “starting over territory.”
The wind from Milton reached 100 mph gusts on the island, according to Tipton, also caused tornadoes across the state.
On the island, the gusts mean more vegetative debris and structural damage on top of what was left after Hurricane Helene. It was “insult to injury,” as Tipton described it at an Oct. 21 commission workshop.
Aside from its wind personality, Bunting said the intensity and speed of this hurricane set it apart from the others this season.
For one, Milton went from a tropical storm to a Category 5 hurricane in 30 hours, according to Bunting, which he said was the fastest-growing storm in Atlantic hurricane history. The hurricane ended up losing strength as it approached land and fell to a Category 3 storm.
Still, it was what Tipton described as the “poster child” of rapid intensification.
Hurricane Milton also had an unusual track, Bunting said, since it formed in the Gulf of Mexico and had almost a straight path directly east. Most hurricanes don’t follow as straight of a path as Milton did, Bunting said.
All three of the hurricanes of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season impacted the Suncoast in its own way, but the fact that three hurricanes happened this season — and intensified in these ways — holds broader lessons to be learned.
“The signature of climate warming is all over them,” Bunting said. “They’re pulling in from an atmosphere that’s much warmer.”
According to some estimates by the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the Earth’s global temperature has risen about 2 degrees Fahrenheit since the mid-1800s. Warmer atmospheric temperatures also lead to warmer ocean temperatures, both of which are catalysts for stronger and more rapidly intensifying storms, Bunting said.
Recent storms have been much stronger than what Bunting remembers seeing while growing up.
“Hurricanes we used to have are not like the ones we’re having today. They’re a different breed and they’re much more dangerous. They’re more frequent and larger, in general. Slower moving, too,” he said.
While the area recovers from the damage dealt by Hurricanes Helene and Milton, Bunting said this is also an opportunity to learn from the recent weather patterns.
“We got to sit back now and evaluate what the last five years have looked like around here and then, finally open our brains to the fact that climate has changed and it requires a different response than the one we had in the 1980s or '90s,” Bunting said.
Part of that evaluation is how to rebuild after storms like Hurricanes Helene and Milton destroyed some low-lying properties.
“It doesn’t mean we have to give up. What it means is we have to change the way we do business,” Bunting said.
To Bunting, it’s not so much the fact that people rebuild as it is the method by which people rebuild. This means modernizing building codes to build more resilient buildings and prepare for more frequent and intense storms, according to him.
People of the Sarasota area can still enjoy living here, Bunting said, but he believes public policy and infrastructure need to respond accordingly.
“There’s no point in rebuilding the past because we’ve learned some hard lessons here,” Bunting said. “If we learn it now, it’s going to save untold money and grief in people's lives as we go into the future.”
