Hurricane Milton roars toward US retirees paradise @200kmph amid political storm

TOI correspondent from Washington: The hurricane barreling in from the Gulf of Mexico towards Florida is expected to be so catastrophic that even the weatherman describing it broke down on television. NBC6 's John Morales , the longest tenured TV meteorologist in Florida, fought back tears on Tuesday as he described Hurricane Milton bearing down on Tampa Bay . Issuing evacuation orders to more than 5 million people in the region, the city mayor Jane Castor had a chilling message: If you don't leave, you are going to die.

Millions have taken heed and fled the region in miles and miles of bumper-to-bumper traffic in an exodus that has caused shortage of gas, hotel rooms, and some essential items along the way, amid fears that the double whammy -- Hurricane Helene followed by Milton -- will wreck Florida's status as a retirees' paradise. Warm weather and no state income tax has long attracted older Americans to the Sunshine state, but at least for now, prognosis is dark for both in a hurricane that is being described as a "once-in-a-lifetime" event and "storm of the century."

Alarmists are demanding that the met folk create a new category 6 to account for the fearsome hurricane already classified as category 5, the highest, as it roars across the Gulf of Mexico. But Milton is expected ease off a bit to make landfall on late Wednesday night or early Thursday as a Category 3 or 4 hurricane; even that will cause storm surges of 9 feet or more in the Tampa area, which could submerge the ground floor of most dwellings along the coast. While those with the means have fled, those who are too poor or infirm (or foolhardy or simply think the forecasts are overwrought) have hunkered down to face rain, floods, and winds that could top 200 kmph. Local officials fear that such wind speeds could cause the debris from Hurricane Helene, still piled up on the streets, to turn into projectiles.

Meanwhile, the catastrophic events are being weaponized in a politically polarized America with wild conspiracy theories ranging from the government creating and directing hurricanes to aid and relief being directed (or not directed) depending on the political affiliation of the affected. On Tuesday, Florida's Republican governor Ron DeSantis declined to take calls from vice president Kamala Harris to discuss relief efforts- saying she had never called about earlier storms and her outreach now was purely political - even as Donald Trump and his MAGA cohorts unloaded on her with bogus charges of diverting emergency funds to illegal immigrants and foreign countries.

Harris is stuck between the wind and the whirlwind as she struggles to balance her presidential campaign with the obligations of her current office. Too many campaign events and she's pilloried for not paying attention to the unfolding disaster. Too much attention to the disaster and she's accused of showboating; not to speak of getting in the way of relief efforts. Trump meanwhile is sitting on the sidelines for the most part making political capital out of the disaster and her discomfort, posting withering takedowns on social media, one of which read, "They can’t get anything done properly, but I will make up for lost time, and do it right, when I get there. Hold on, and vote these horrible “public servants” out of office.... Kamala is even, WORSE THAN BIDEN. MAGA2024!"

A CNN review of the crisis said "a potential natural disaster of such magnitude ought to be immune from political opportunism...but in the final weeks of a presidential election featuring a candidate as unrelenting as Donald Trump, nothing escapes partisanship and Milton’s aftermath may prove to be the next opening for the ex-president’s maelstrom of misinformation."

Lost in the political maelstrom for now is any discussion on climate change that most of the scientific and meteorological community, including John Morales, the weatherman who broke down, attribute to global warming. Trump remains a climate change skeptic wedded to fossil fuels and hydrocarbons with no sign the crisis will change his mind, even though he is technically a Floridian now with a home in Palm Beach, which is some distance away from the path of the hurricane and is not expected to be affected a great deal.

But those with long memories and a religious bent have a different take. "What if God is throwing this very ugly situation at Florida again in retribution for what Florida did to Al Gore... you remember him, the guy who tried to warn about climate change?" read one post on social media. The 2000 US presidential election was decided in Florida ( 29 electoral votes) which was deemed to have been won by George Bush by 538 votes after the Supreme Court intervened in a contested vote count.