As if Hurricane Helene didn’t already wreak enough havoc, Hurricane Milton soon joined the not-at-all-fun party by further destroying what Helene had already ruined in central Florida. States north of Florida, unaffected by Milton, were able to start assessing damages soon after Helene had passed, but the tropical storms weren’t done with Florida yet. Less than two weeks had passed after Helene’s landfall before Milton landed on Florida’s west coast, leaving thousands of people trying to evacuate before another devastating storm. 

In Florida, hurricanes are almost a way of life, but that doesn’t mean it gets easier each time around. So far, 14 deaths have been attributed to Milton, on top of the unknown, rising death toll from Helene. Milton also caused Florida to send out 126 tornado warnings in one day, more than ever before. 3.2 million people were left without power after landfall, the roof of the Tampa Bay Rays’ Tropicana Field was torn off, and a 500-foot crane was blown into the Tampa Bay Times office building, all happening just in Helene’s passing. Milton’s aftermath was severe, but Florida is already beginning to rebuild. Power restoration is not expected to take long, according to the president of Duke Energy in Florida, Melissa Seixas, and President Biden, in talks with local officials, says: “Anything they ask for, they can get.” 

The better news is that Hurricane Milton did not reach the level of catastrophe predicted. Milton, before reaching land, had amassed 180 mph winds, thus gaining Category 5 status. Upon landfall, however, the storm had already decreased to Category 3, and as it moved inland, it was rapidly decreasing to Category 1. Yet, as apparent in its destruction, the falling severity of Milton did not leave Florida unscathed. Jeff Masters, formerly working with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s hurricane hunters, told CBS News that “some of the biggest catastrophes in hurricane history were from weakening storms,” citing Hurricane Katrina as a glaring example. Katrina had also started at Category 5 before falling to a Category 3 storm at landfall, but caused billions in damages in 2005. Likewise, President Biden predicts the damage from Milton alone will cost $50 billion and has already pledged $600 million—$94 million for Florida alone—to upgrade the country’s electric grids in case of extreme weather.

While Floridians are used to hurricanes, the upper half of the country is not. Helene was immensely unprecedented; Western North Carolina is about 500 miles away from where Helene first made landfall in Florida, but the storm still managed to completely ravage the region. Erica Scott, a wedding photographer who moved from California to Asheville, North Carolina, to escape natural disaster, told the New York Times that she “always felt safe from climate change in this region,” but with Helene’s devastation, she now questions that “maybe there’s nowhere that's safe.” Scott is right. According to Beth Zimmerman, the disaster operations lead for the Federal Emergency Management Agency during Obama’s presidency, “Hurricanes no longer hit the coastline and then die. Everybody needs to be looking not to what they experienced in the past, but what is happening now in terms of hurricanes and extreme weather.” In other words, Milton could have easily reached much farther than Florida, like Helene did, but fortunately did not. 

What the next hurricane has in store, though, is still unknown. With worsening climate change causing stronger, more unpredictable storms, Mrs. Scott’s words serve as a haunting reminder that hurricanes can one day unleash their wrath where we least expect. 

Information retrieved from the Asheville Citizen Times, CBS News, CNN, Forbes, the New York Times, the Washington Post, and Yahoo! News