Florida Public Radio Emergency Network (FPREN) Storm Center | By Leslie Hudson
If you’re keeping score, Hurricane Milton set Florida’s state record for the most tornadoes in a given day. There were at least 46 tornadoes confirmed in the State, that’s more than twice any other day in Florida’s modern recorded history.
According to National Weather Service data put out by the Southeast Regional Climate Center, Hurricane Milton spawned nearly 4 dozen tornadoes in Florida from just before midnight on Oct. 8 through Oct. 9. The hurricane-spawned tornado outbreak is Florida’s most prolific of any single outbreak dating back to 1954, some 70 years ago. Milton’s record is more than double the previous modern-day record of 15 Florida tornadoes spawned by Hurricane Irma in September of 2017.
2 NWS offices in Florida also set daily records for the most tornadoes spawned in a single day. The NWS in Miami had a previous record of 15 tornadoes set back in 1950. And the NWS office in Melbourne had a previous record of 19 set back in 1989.
Also equally rare for Florida tornadoes were the 3 EF-s tornadoes that tore through south Florida in Glades, Palm Beach and St. Lucie Counties. 6 people died in St. Lucie county from one of the deadly tornadoes. That made Milton the state’s third deadliest tornado outbreak in 70 years.
The last time a Florida hurricane or tropical storm spawned a powerful F/EF3 tornado was from Hurricane Agnes in 1973. Hurricane Agnes spawned at least one F/EF3 tornado in Florida, according to SERCC. Other than Milton and Agnes, a hurricane in June of 1959 was the only other to spin off such a strong tornado in the state since 1950.
According to NOAA’s Storm Prediction Center, only five tropical cyclone-induced F/EF3 tornadoes occurred in 29 years from 1995 through 2023.
To add some context, Florida’s deadliest tornado outbreak was Feb. 22-23, 1998 in central Florida that killed 42 people and damaged or destroyed over 3,700 buildings. Only 8 tornadoes were spawned during that outbreak, but three of those were deadly F3 tornadoes in the Orlando metro area.
The destructive Feb. 1998 tornadoes all occurred late at night between 11 p.m. and 2:30 a.m. ET which forecasters believed led to the higher death rate as most people were still sleeping when the warnings were issued.
National weather offices around the State were issuing record warnings as well. On October 9th alone, several NWS offices issued a whopping 126 tornado warnings in central and South Florida.
Tornadoes are quite common in the outer rain bands of landfalling tropical storms and hurricanes. But there was a perfect atmospheric storm (if you will) that aided in this tropical tornado outbreak. Temperatures in the southern part of the State soared to near 90 degrees, with oppressive humidity and super saturated dew points in the upper 70s.
There was also a lot of wind shear over South Florida that day as well. Wind shear is the change in wind speed and direction with height. Strong wind shear provides the horizontal spin needed for thunderstorm updrafts to tilt and stretch vertically, which is a key ingredient in producing tornadoes. Another factor that may have contributed to the outbreak was Milton’s almost due west-to-east trajectory, which is unusual for Florida. Milton pulled drier air aloft eastward into the southern half of the peninsula, cutting down rainfall and rain-cooled air on Milton’s southern half and increasing the instability for severe thunderstorms.
Milton held court with 3 other hurricanes this season that triggered a notable swarm of twisters. In July, Hurricane Beryl and its inland remnants spawned over 60 tornadoes from east Texas to upstate New York, the most of any U.S. tropical system in nearly 20 years.
About a month later, Hurricane Debby generated about two dozen tornadoes across the Southeast. Then in late September, Hurricane Helene generated about 35 tornadoes in the Southeast after catastrophic inland flooding in the southern Appalachians and storm surge flooding in Florida.
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