The Atlantic [unpaywalled]: “In a way, Milton is exactly the type of storm that scientists have been warning could happen; Michael Wehner, a climate scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, called it shocking but not surprising. “One of the things we know is that, in a warmer world, the most intense storms are more intense,” he told me. Milton might have been a significant hurricane regardless, but every aspect of the storm that could have been dialed up has been. A hurricane forms from multiple variables, and in Milton, the variables have come together to form a nightmare. The storm is gaining considerable energy thanks to high sea-surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico, which is far hotter than usual. And that energy translates into higher wind speeds. Milton is also taking up moisture from the very humid atmosphere, which, as a rule, can hold 7 percent more water vapor for every degree-Celsius increase in temperature. Plus, the air is highly unstable and can therefore rise more easily, which allows the hurricane to form and maintain its shape. And thanks to La Niña, there isn’t much wind shear—the wind’s speed and direction are fairly uniform at different elevations—“so the storm can stay nice and vertically stacked,” Kim Wood, an atmospheric scientist at the University of Arizona, told me. “All of that combined is making the storm more efficient at using the energy available.” In other words, the storm very efficiently became a major danger. That perfect combination—of hot seas, humid air, and little wind shear—is being aided by Milton’s path through the Gulf of Mexico’s western part, which hasn’t seen much major storm activity yet this season. When a storm passes over hot water, it sucks up much of that heat, using it as fuel and lowering the water temperature. But in the western gulf, “nothing else had been there to cool off the water,” Wood told me…Trying to ride out storms of that size can be deadly. Overnight, Milton downgraded to a Category 4 but grew in size. It could also still reintensify to a Category 5. Florida is now preparing to evacuate potentially more than 6 million people ahead of Milton’s predicted landfall. And the conditions it will collide with on shore have already been worsened by climate change. The Gulf of Mexico has seen twice the global average rate of sea-level rise since 2010, according to an analysis by The Washington Post, and the sea along the Tampa Bay coast is now nearly five inches higher than it was 14 years ago. So when the storm surge floods the coast, salt water will probably travel farther inland, and likely with more force, than it would otherwise…”