Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 hurricane late Monday morning.

Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.

Milton now ranks as the third-greatest 24-hour wind speed intensification for a hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. (Records are based on data since the satellite era began in the 1960s.)

  • TransplantedSconie@lemm.ee
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    26 days ago

    Good thing they removed climate change from being a thing discussed in the legislature. That should fix things.

  • Snapz@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    So is trump at Mar a Lego right now standing proudly on the front lawn for this? Is he staying there, “standing his ground” against the “climate hoax”?

    Or is he hiding somewhere else safe, with an excuse, like a coward who’s actually afraid of climate change?

  • Gerudo@lemm.ee
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    26 days ago

    Good thing DeSantis won’t pick up the phone from Biden or Harris to start funding relief.

    • Today@lemmy.world
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      26 days ago

      If your policy covers wind they claim the damage is from water. If your policy covers water, they claim the damage is from wind. If your policy covers both, they claim a hurricane is exempt as an act of god.

      • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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        25 days ago

        I want to bitch about insurance companies but insurance is for something that is unavoidable.

        All this shit is becoming more and more avoidable.

      • Dogiedog64@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        Which, to be fair, is really about all they can do. You CANNOT stop a hurricane from obliterating a house. There is NOTHING the average American can do about it except leave and hope it survives.

    • superkret@feddit.org
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      26 days ago

      Insurance companies don’t build shit. They just collect money from people, and sometimes give some of it back.

      • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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        26 days ago

        They’re actually required to give 85% of everything back, so they give back most of it. It seems like Florida is becoming too much of a hassle to insure, though. Some companies have pulled out of florida.

        • _haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works
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          26 days ago

          unless they can find a way to screw you over for profit, then they absolutely will no matter how ridiculous the “reasoning”*

          • baldingpudenda@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            I believe it was Katrina where the insurance said it was wind damage when you only had flood insurance, but if you’re neighbor only had wind coverage they’d tell them it was water damage.

            • ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de
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              25 days ago

              Right storm. Wrong details.

              They (insurance companies) were claiming it as flood/surge damage, even if wind ripped off your roof to let the water inside. Wind was covered, water wasn’t. Companies were sued for trying to blanket deny an area based on one generic engineering report, or denying coverage if flood waters came through after wind destroyed a place. Insurance com0anies don’t typically offer flood insurance to a lot of places and if homeowners want it, they have to buy it through the federal government.

    • Lumilias@pawb.social
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      26 days ago

      What insurance companies? They all backed out of Florida years ago. Now it’s state funded home insurance footing the bill.

      • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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        25 days ago

        I read a thing recently that insurance companies are getting increasingly skittish all over the country, even places that wouldn’t traditionally be considered risky, because yay, climate change.

        The interesting thing about it was that insurance companies’ insurance is increasingly the thing that’s causing issues, because it’s getting harder for the risk to be spread out. That is to say that insurance companies financially rely on areas with low rates of natural disasters because they end up being a net positive due to insurance premiums and no need for payout. Fewer of these “safe” areas mean the insurance companies struggle to stay solvent and have to rely on their own insurance policies to have their back, but those meta-insurance companies have apparently been historically loud about climate change — probably because besides the government, they’re the ones who have to pony up

        • CainTheLongshot@lemmy.world
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          25 days ago

          Here in Missouri, home owners insurance is starting to lose hail damage from coverage. Damn near 90% of the houses around my area have now replaced their roofs, and have the roofing signage out front. It’s almost a running joke now: guessing which house will be next to get one, and counting the company’s signs to see who’s making a killing.

    • Null User Object@programming.dev
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      26 days ago

      If people don’t have the common sense to not build houses in places that are guaranteed to be destroyed by a natural disaster sooner than later, then I shouldn’t have to subsidize their rebuilding costs through my insurance premiums.

        • Null User Object@programming.dev
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          25 days ago

          That seems like a perfectly reasonable place to build that’s not obviously at threat from hurricanes. But sometimes shit happens that couldn’t be easily foreseen, and THAT’S what insurance is for.

          My point, however, is that insurance is NOT to make other policy holders foot the expense of someone repeatedly repairing/rebuilding after completely foreseeable/inevitable events.

          To anyone that insists on having a house right on the beach on the Gulf Coast, I say, “Insure thy self.”

      • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        Yeah, used to be that insurance costs were almost directly skewed based on risk. But then people were upset that it costed so much to insure some places(the ones that should be prohibitively expensive to insure). And then slowly over time they baked in little increases in price everywhere else to subsidise huge price cuts in those areas to out-compete the companies that put the onus entirely on the people taking risks. Eventually, as it became more and more widespread to do that, it became financially more viable to spread it out rather than have drastically more expensive areas. And now we all have to partially cover people who are taking way more risk than we would.

          • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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            26 days ago

            Forms of communism that mean they are making more money are actually ok by them. They just have to find a different name to call it so they don’t have to say that icky word that gives them feelings.

      • ApatheticCactus@lemmy.world
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        26 days ago

        That or build something that can stand up to being hit. Tall order, but the inner armchair engineer in me thinks it’s like, totally possible.

        • Tarquinn2049@lemmy.world
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          26 days ago

          I think you forget, building it stronger once would cost 50% more upfront. Better to build it twice, or three times at only 100% cost each time. That way you can be the lowest bidder every time.

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    25 days ago

    Currently in my house in Florida, where I am looks to be not on the direct path but not completely free. Hurricanes can move a lot, especially when they get on land and staet losing speed.

    Once we evacuated 5 hours in a car with all our animals (at the time 2 big sweaty dogs) in a car that wasnt even the size of a minivan. We packed everything we needed just in case. Once we got inside the hotel we booked we took a ~2 hour nap and upon checking the storm again it had moved to come right to where the hotel is. We then had to drive 5 hours BACK home where we began.

    Anyhoo, wish us luck! I don’t wanna evacuate with 4 cats and a large dog haha

    UPDATE: 5:30 10/8
    I got 5+ ‘amber alerts’ today. They just wouldn’t stop haha

    • AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net
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      25 days ago

      Good luck to you and your family. I don’t know anyone in Florida, so I will be thinking of you as a proxy for all the people I am concerned for in the potential path of this hurricane.

    • strawberrysocial@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      I wish you luck trifling toad🤞 Escaping a situation with just people is difficult, with additional animals makes it so much more stressful. Especially cats since they have to be put in a crate and need a litter box etc.

    • Kraven_the_Hunter@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      24 days ago

      My first thought was, “5 Amber alerts amd a hurricane… good god what’s going on in Florida?!”

      You had me even more worried there for a second.

  • Tja@programming.dev
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    25 days ago

    Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.

    Someone had a word quota to fill.

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    NOAA changed Milton’s heading on Hurricanes.gov to plead with people to listen to evacuation orders.

    We’ll all be very happy to feel silly if this doesn’t go the way it looks like it’s going to go. But please for the love of humanity get out of the way of this thing.

  • Itdidnttrickledown@lemmy.world
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    26 days ago

    I guess their god doesn’t like florida. I wonder why?

    On a more serious note I really hope all the decent people of florida the best of luck. To the rest I hope you only get thoughts and prayers.

    • CheeseNoodle@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Floridas gonna be the next Atlantis, a mysterious land that vanished under the ocean from which tales came of strange people comitting outragous deeds. Future historians will see the tales of the mighty ‘Florida Men’ and assume it was some kind of myth.

      • Dasus@lemmy.world
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        25 days ago

        More like Doggerland a place having verifiably existed, and which would hold answers to what man’s primitive ancestors were doing, but which we don’t really go to look at, because studying shit that’s underwater is expensive and we’re not that interested.

    • Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works
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      25 days ago

      I wonder why?

      Anytime Americans are asked which state would you get rid of, Florida is the top answer.

      Maybe their god is starting to listen.

      /s

  • JaggedRobotPubes@lemmy.world
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    25 days ago

    I’m gonna tell myself that this is finally bad enough to spur widespread action on global warming as a way of feeling better about it and you can all preemptively shut up with your reality checks.

    • Fedizen@lemmy.world
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      25 days ago

      Tbh I’ve learned a lot about how thermal energy affects these storms and I gotta say, the only people who are gonna be living in Florida 20 years from now are people who live in submarines.

      We ought to be executing oil company CEOs for treason.

    • Saleh@feddit.org
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      25 days ago

      In Germany more than 200 people died in a severe flooding in 2021. Just 2 month prior the conservative party CDU removed flood protection laws in one of the states most affected. In one of the towns completely destroyed they were again voted strongest just a few months later.

    • Samvega@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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      25 days ago

      I’m gonna tell myself that this is finally bad enough to spur widespread action on global warming

      I, too, want to believe that humans are capable for caring enough about themselves, each other, and their descendants in order to put in place measures to make the world better for everyone.