The Science Behind Why Hurricane Milton Is So Powerful

Jane Castor, the mayor of Tampa, has little patience for local residents who plan to disobey the evacuation orders that have been issued in the run-up to Hurricane Milton’s expected landfall on Florida’s gulf coast on Wednesday evening, Oct. 9. “If you choose to stay in one of these evacuation areas,” she said in a CNN interview, “you’re going to die.”
Alarming? Yes. Hyperbole? Probably not.
TIME editor-at-large Jeffrey Kluger explains why Milton is nothing short of a meteorological monster.