Hurricane Milton has been wreaking havoc across Florida in recent days, with millions of people evacuating and 70,000 moving to government shelters, but its impact began even before it made landfall.
Severe thunderstorms associated with the outer bands of the system produced an outbreak of tornadoes, some unusually powerful. While tornadoes are often produced by hurricanes, the number and severity before Milton arrived were out of the ordinary. In all, 130 tornado warnings were issued on Wednesday, and four people were killed by a tornado at a mobile home community in Fort Pierce.
The abundant moisture associated with tropical systems provides ample fuel for tornado-producing thunderstorms to develop. In addition, the change of wind speed and direction with height – known as wind shear – in the outer bands of storms can also help in tornados form.
This was just a taste of what was to come, and Milton made landfall as a category 3 storm late on Wednesday. It brought winds above 100mph in western Florida with sustained winds as high as 90mph inland, cutting power to more than 3m homes and businesses.
This was partly responsible for the storm surge on the west coast of Florida, which exceeded 1.8 metres (6ft) in places, but the worst of it stayed south of Tampa. Winds subsided somewhat as Milton moved inland, as is often the case with hurricanes, but rainfall brought additional flood risks.
Rainfall of 400mm fell in just two hours in St Petersburg, more than six times the monthly average for October. The combination of wind damage and floods has severely affected the water network in places, particularly in Pinellas county where a hospital had to be evacuated.
On the other side of the Atlantic, the remains of Hurricane Kirk has brought severe weather to parts of western Europe. Strong winds in Portugal uprooted about 400 trees in the northern city of Porto, with 300,000 homes losing electricity. This system then moved to France, where heavy rain was the main threat, bringing 80mm to the Paris suburbs. In southern France, winds knocked out power for 64,000 people.