The Gulf is now the hottest it’s been in the modern record, according to Brian McNoldy, a climatologist at the University of Miami,

The Gulf, and the North Atlantic ocean more broadly, are unusually hot. That much is clear. But there’s also a strange blob of colder water around the equator, which has spurred conflicting, confusing headlines that suggest the Atlantic is cooling.

🤔🤔🤔 They moved the heat??

https://www.vox.com/climate/368324/hurricane-season-2024-gulf-mexico-ocean-warming

Milton is not the typical Atlantic hurricane, according to Jonathan Lin, an atmospheric scientist at Cornell University. “It is exceedingly rare for a hurricane to form in the western Gulf, track eastward, and make landfall on the Western coast of Florida,” he said in an email. “There are not really any hurricanes on record that have done this and made landfall at a Category 3+ status.”

What’s even more unusual is how quickly the storm intensified, defying forecasts and gaining more than 100 miles per hour in wind speed between Sunday morning and early Monday afternoon. Milton had “some of the most explosive intensification this forecaster has ever witnessed!” a National Weather Service forecaster wrote on X Monday.

https://www.vox.com/climate/376323/hurricane-milton-category-5-tampa-florida