Experts: Climate change intensified Milton's rain, wind

WASHINGTON: Experts said on Friday that human-induced climate change made Hurricane Milton, which lashed Florida this week, wetter and windier.

"Heavy one-day rainfall events such as the one associated with Milton are 20-30 per cent more intense and about twice as likely in today's climate," the international World Weather Attribution group said in a report.

The effect boosted Milton's wind strength by about 10 per cent, making what would have been a Category 2 storm a more destructive Category 3, on a five-point scale, the report said.

Meanwhile, the death toll from Hurricane Milton rose to at least 16 on Friday, officials in Florida said, as residents began the painful process of piecing their lives and homes back together.

Nearly 2.5 million households and businesses were still without power, and some areas in the path cut through the Sunshine State by the monster storm from the Gulf of Mexico to the Atlantic Ocean remained flooded.

Milton crashed into the Florida Gulf Coast late Wednesday as a Category 3 storm, with powerful winds smashing communities still reeling from Hurricane Helene two weeks ago, which killed 237 people across the US southeast, including in Florida.

So far, though, it appeared that tornadoes, rather than floodwaters, were responsible for many of the storm's deaths.

"It was pretty scary," said Susan Stepp, a 70-year-old resident of Fort Pierce, a city on Florida's Atlantic coast where four people died in a tornado spawned by Milton. "They did find some people just outside dead, in a tree," she said. "I wish they would have evacuated."

Stepp's husband Bill said a tornado "picked up my 22-ton motor home and threw it across the yard."

"Scary and heartbreaking at the same time, to see much damage and all things you really love just gone, but it's only things, and we're still here," the 72-year-old said.

At least six people were killed in St Lucie County, four in Volusia County, two in Pinellas County, and one each in Hillsborough, Polk, Orange and Citrus counties, local officials said.

The storm downed power lines, shredded the roof of the Tampa baseball stadium and inundated homes, but Florida was able to avoid the level of catastrophic devastation that officials had feared.

"The storm was significant, but thankfully this was not the worst-case scenario," Governor Ron DeSantis told a news conference.

The National Weather Service issued 126 tornado warnings across the state Wednesday, the most ever issued for a single calendar day for the state in records dating back to 1986, wrote hurricane expert Michael Lowry.