Fort Myers Mayor Kevin Anderson wants everyone within the city to know that they have everything in place to respond quickly and effectively once Hurricane Milton has passed.
“We check our storm drainage to make sure they’re clear. We pick up debris. We pick up the palm fronds. We do everything we can to minimize the effect,” said Anderson. “But if the flood’s coming, if the water is rising, we can’t do anything to stop that. But what we can do is be prepared to respond once the storm passes, and we are ready. We showed that after Hurricane Ian, and we’ve learned more since then, so once the storm passes the city will be in good shape with our response.”
Anderson also wants everyone in Southwest Florida to take Milton seriously and not be lulled into complacency by the storm’s slight weakening overnight.
“People are going to be focused on, 'Oh man, it’s dropped down from 180 mph. It’s no longer a Category 5,'” he said. “No. No. Don’t let your guard down. It’s the water. This could be a major water event that makes Ian look like nothing.”
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“The City of Fort Myers and its leadership, they’ve done their job preparing the City for the storm, and more so, preparing the emergency teams for their response after the storm,” Mayor Anderson emphasized.
“Right now, all we can do is hope that our citizens have done what they should do to prepare and protect themselves,” he added, “and by that I mean if they’re in a flood zone, I hope they evacuated.”
“I’ve been here since the mid-70s, on the police department almost 25 years, been through a lot of storms. I thought Ian was the worst one. But I’ll tell you, this one has me concerned."
What lies at the heart of the Mayor’s concerns is the realization that when it comes to surge, more important than a storm’s maximum sustained winds or “category” is the size of its wind field in front of and behind the eye. This is referred to as “fetch,” and the greater the fetch, the higher the storm surge as the water has a longer distance over which to pile up.
As Milton approaches landfall, it will interact with wind shear and dry air aloft from a cool front moving down the Florida peninsula. This is likely to cause the hurricane’s wind speed and intensity to decrease, but it will concurrently cause the storm’s wind field or fetch to expand significantly which, in turn, will increase the volume and height of the surge that Milton will generate.
In addition to the size of the storm’s wind field, the storm’s forward speed is an important factor when it comes to surge. At present, Milton is only tracking at 8 mph, which is well below the average of 12 to 15 mph for Atlantic basin storms. As a general proposition, the slower the storm, the greater the surge as the storm has more time to pile up water in front of and to the right of the eye.
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