For meteorologists who study extreme weather events like Hurricane Milton — and Hurricane Helene just two weeks ago — the most frightening aspect of the back-to-back storms isn’t just strength.
It’s speed.
The fact that Milton mutated from tropical storm to Category 5 hurricane in under 24 hours stunned NBC6 Miami’s John Morales to the point where he held back tears. Watch the video in his X account.
Morales isn’t alone. Other scientists sounded the alarm, too. They used words like “unprecedented” and “jaw-dropping.”
Within 36 hours of formation, Milton’s winds reached 180 miles per hour. That’s lightning fast in the world of storm tracking.
But it shouldn’t have been a surprise. Helene also mutated from a tropical storm to a Category 4 hurricane in just two days.
For those wondering how two storms, with rains Morales described as “biblical,” are a sudden reality, NASA has an answer: Warm ocean waters due to human-caused climate change.
These conditions caused Milton and Helene to become powerful Category 5 storms.
“Sea surface temperatures in the Gulf of Mexico were well above average for this time of year as Milton churned toward Florida,” NASA Climate, an account affiliated with NASA, posted on X.
The primary business activities of certain companies are directly linked to greenhouse gases such as carbon dioxide and methane.
You know the names: Exxon Mobil Corp XOM and Chevron Corp CVX, Marathon Oil Corp MRO, BP plc BP and PetroChina PCCYF, to name a few.
“I tried to warn people,” Morales wrote in the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists last month. “Except that the warning was not well received by everyone. A person accused me of being a ‘climate militant,’ a suggestion that I'm embellishing extreme weather threats to drive an agenda. Another simply said that my predictions were ‘an exaggeration.’ But it wasn't an exaggeration.”
Meanwhile, oil companies operating in the Gulf are currently experiencing setbacks. Chevron’s Blind Faith platform, for example, shut down and forced personnel to evacuate. It produces around 65,000 barrels of oil per day.
Historically, companies like Shell PLC SHEL and others in the Gulf region followed similar protocols, ahead of significant storms like Helene and — just a couple of weeks earlier — Hurricane Francine.
ExxonMobil Accepts, Then Denies
Like Morales, ExxonMobil’s own scientists made similar predictions — in 1977.
InsideClimateNews republished a 2015 article this past May that chronicles how James Black presented evidence to Exxon brass decades ago, detailing how the oil industry’s operations would endanger humanity.
“There is general scientific agreement that the most likely manner in which mankind is influencing the global climate is through carbon dioxide release from the burning of fossil fuels," Black said at the time.
Exxon eventually nixed its carbon dioxide research and chose, instead, to deny climate change.
Fast-forward to today, elected officials are either dismissing it entirely or calling it a hoax. Meanwhile, the U.S. produces more oil than ever before.
“We're seeing it play out in this post-truth era, in ways that's really damaging society. And I'm not talking more in the psychological, esoterical ways, or maybe in the election outcome ways. This is getting in the way of emergency management agencies doing their job and saving lives and getting people out of harm's way,” Morales says. “It's getting in the way of recovery efforts… And yeah, it's definitely a hindrance to my mission as a person whose life mission is saving life and property.”
What’s Next: The U.S. Energy Information Administration continues to analyze energy data, and how Milton affects energy infrastructure. The agency will publish an inventory report on Thursday; The Wall Street Journal expects the surplus in U.S. natural gas to contract as Hurricane Milton makes its way across Florida.
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Photo: Courtesy of NASA
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