Forecasters keeping an eye on the tropics as recovery from Milton and Helene continues
The years-long process of recovery and rebuilding is just beginning across the Southeast, but unfortunately, the hurricane season isn't done yet.
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00:00We do want to bring in more on the tropics and for that we turn to Chief
00:03Meteorologist, AccuWeather Chief Meteorologist John Porter who joins us
00:07this morning and John as we've been following a kind of the pattern so far
00:11this year it's pretty interesting to look back at some of these storms
00:14especially most recently Milton. Right and Milton brought a variety of
00:19destructive impacts across Florida as we have been talking about this is one of
00:22the most this will be one of the most costly and destructive hurricanes in
00:26Florida history and when you look at the map it brought a variety of issues
00:30from the extremely unusual intense tornado outbreak that accompanied some
00:36of those rain bands with Milton the damaging storm surge from just south of
00:40Tampa all the way down to Fort Myers and Naples some places that were hit again
00:46with just recovering from the impacts from Helene and all of that flooding
00:50rain and destructive winds along the I-4 corridor heavily populated area from
00:55Tampa toward Orlando and over toward Daytona Beach and up toward Jacksonville
01:00as well so it was a mess across much of Florida. And of course this has not been
01:05our only storm system that we've monitored this year let alone for the
01:09state of Florida but the entire southeast. Correct and Milton again as
01:13AccuWeather estimated last week our preliminary estimate 160 to 180 billion
01:18dollars in total damage and economic loss and so many people in Florida have
01:25lost so much and they're going to need lots of help in terms of starting the
01:29recovery process and that's going to go on for years in some locations and look
01:34at the where Milton fits in here this is not good company along with Helene and
01:39with Ian just under Ian's financial costs from a couple of years ago also in
01:44Florida so we're mounting the cost of hurricanes so far this season and in
01:50fact when you look at what's just happened in the last couple of weeks you
01:53take Helene and also Milton and you get over 400 billion dollars in total damage
02:00and economic loss most of that's almost that's almost half a trillion and two
02:07percent of the United States GDP so when you look at that some economists are
02:11predicting that there would be perhaps one or two or three percent growth in
02:15the economy gross domestic product this year this may challenge or eliminate
02:19most of that these recent storms never mind also add to the insurance woes
02:22across Florida and then when we talk about the tropics this time of year we'd
02:29hope that everything could just go quiet especially after these storms that
02:32you're showcasing here with all the money damage that's been done but that's
02:36not necessarily the case no that would be great news but unfortunately that's
02:40not in the cards here we're going to be watching another disturbance that's going
02:45to be crossing the tropical Atlantic here this week and then as it gets
02:49toward the islands may become in a more favorable spot for additional
02:53development and then we've got that same trouble spot here in the care in the
02:57Caribbean Sea that we've been talking about for days
03:00Accuweather is the only source to be identifying this is any risk of
03:04development you can see some blow up of thunderstorms from time to time there
03:07and later this week we're going to continue to have to watch that area
03:10that's been a trouble spot this whole tropical season yeah and that's the one
03:15that we will keep an eye on as we talk about where things go from there John
03:19and the question would be if it's in the western Caribbean can it form and then
03:23if it does where would it go that's right there's two questions there as you
03:27mentioned will it form and again we have scattered shout we have some showers and
03:32thunderstorms there nothing consolidated it will take until later this week for
03:36us a system to potentially consolidate there and if one develops to the south
03:40that's more likely to track toward Central America one developing further
03:44to the north though can get into parts of the Gulf and may eventually threaten
03:49Florida that's not a done deal and we'll have to see how this all evolves
03:53but we are concerned that this is yet again something else to monitor here as
03:57well as that next system coming across the tropical Atlantic as well so more
04:02trouble here to keep our eyes on over the coming days and that's just that we
04:06will be watching Accuweather chief meteorologist John Porter thank you again
04:09for joining us this morning