After several days of whirling across the Gulf of Mexico, blowing at up to 180 miles per hour, Hurricane Milton is tearing toward Florida as the terrible embodiment of a historically destructive season.
Hurricane experts are still trying to understand why the current season is so scrambled. The extreme storm in July, the sudden lull during the traditional hurricane peak, and the explosion of cyclones in October together suggest that "the climatological rules of the past no longer apply," Ryan Truchelut, a meteorologist in Florida, told me.
The 2024 Atlantic hurricane season was forecast to be monstrous, but what has actually happened is something more nuanced-and stranger. July began with Hurricane Beryl, a Category 5 storm that emerged much earlier than any other in history.
"there is a dreamlike unreality to living through this time," says Ryan Truchelut, emphasizing the oddities of the current hurricane season as it defies established patterns.
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