00:00This is a glimpse of Hurricane Milton's fury last October as it came ashore on the west coast of Florida, a Category 3 major hurricane.
00:08The storm will be remembered for many different reasons, but meteorologically it also stood out.
00:13Milton's rate of rapid intensification was among the highest ever observed.
00:19Over the warm waters of the Gulf, it increased its wind by 90 miles per hour in just 24 hours.
00:26It's very stunning how strong that storm became so quickly last October.
00:31And this is something we talk about more and more as waters in the ocean are so warm at this time of year.
00:37Rapid intensification is actually when you have a tropical system, already developed a tropical cyclone,
00:42and it increases by at least 30 knots or around 35 miles per hour in a 24-hour period.
00:48So this is where storms can really take off, grow in category size quite quickly,
00:53and obviously become very threatening to many that are maybe in coastlines nearby.
00:59What do you need to actually have rapid intensification?
01:02You need low wind shear, and you also need some very warm water.
01:06Often that is found this time of year.
01:07You also need an abundance of moisture too.
01:10So these are all different components that come into tropical systems.
01:13If we look at that dry air, for example, dry dust can actually erode sides of a hurricane.
01:19Hurricanes are like a top.
01:20They want to be symmetrical.
01:21They want to spin perfectly.
01:23So if we eat away one side of the storm, it's going to lead to some weakening.
01:27It won't stay as strong as it could be.
01:29The other thing that we talk about a lot is wind shear.
01:32And when we do have a lot of wind shear on a storm,
01:35instead of that top being nice upright and being a perfect shoot upward,
01:38it actually tilts a little bit.
01:40Once you get a top to tilt a little bit, it can get wobbly, unstable, can even fall apart.
01:45But with most hurricanes, they just can't stay as strong when they're not vertically stacked.
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