Hurricane Milton spawned 45 tornadoes in South Florida on October 9, raising concerns about whether this is a new trend or an isolated event.
Rachel Bepko is a Gulf Coast native and experienced the storm firsthand.
"I wanted it to be exciting. I wanted it to, you know, be a cool weather phenomenon that was a thing that we talked about later, but it was terrifying," Rachel Bepko said. "It really was because I didn’t know that I’d be sitting here talking to somebody about it. I thought this might be the end."
She described the experience of going from a somewhat gloomy day when suddenly everything changed.
There were pieces of roof flying by, and a tree flew by," she said. "I’m just covering my children, thinking I don’t know that I’m going to survive this, but at least I can be the roof over their bodies as this potentially takes our roof off."
The tornado destroyed her back shed and a neighbor's roof while Bepko was in her hallway.
She said she was shaking, adding, "I pick up the phone and I call my dad, and I said I think we just got hit by a tornado, and he said yeah I think we did too, and it passed over both of our homes."
Bepko experienced one of 45 tornadoes that tore through South Florida as Hurricane Milton barreled toward the state.
Warning Coordination Meteorologist Matthew Elliott with the National Weather Service said 126 tornado warnings were issued on October 9, a record for a single day in Florida.
He said the outbreak was similar to one that you would see across the Plains in the Central U.S. adding, "What went down over an 8-hour period - it’s kind of unprecedented."
Tornadoes are common during hurricanes but are typically weak and short-lived. However, Milton had a different environment to work with.
"It had an expansion to its inner core at almost the perfect time of day where you allowed some of the outer thunderstorms to be displaced farther from the core and you got some heating out in front of the thunderstorms," Elliott explained.
He said, it got just enough, causing the thunderstorms to behave more like a typical Plains environment, where you are able to get a more intense updraft in storms that last longer.
And it wasn't just Milton.
"We’ve had four tropical cyclones this year that have had EF-3 tornadoes. And so that is - very rare. Since 1995, we had only had five prior to this - at all," Elliott said.
A study from ScienceDirect explored whether this is our new normal. It looked at four hurricanes - Ivan, Katrina, Rita, and Harvey - all of which produced significant tornado outbreaks. The study found that when simulating the hurricanes in a future, warmer climate, the number of potentially tornadic thunderstorms increased by four times. However, it's too early to draw conclusions.
"This was one year. I have to stress that," Elliott said. "In previous years before this, we hadn’t seen similar things. I think we need to see the pattern continue to develop over the next 5 or 10 years and see how things continue to evolve."
We are also better at detecting tornadoes on radar, which could skew data.
"Over the last about 10 years, 15 years, the weather service has moved from a five-minute scanning strategy, going around once every five minutes, to being able to do it once every one minute or even once every thirty seconds if they want to," Elliott added.
We also have to consider how a warmer climate impacts hurricanes in general.
Florida saw four storms in 2024 with EF-3s, but when asked if it was a trend we may see in the future, he said, "That’s definitely something we want to know."
Whenever tornadoes threaten our Gulf Coast community, you can count on NBC 2 to keep you informed.
Bepko and her family were safe in the end and said she's grown a great appreciation for local news.
"I have access to the Weather Channel," she said. " but they don’t give you that granular information that can even pinpoint parts of a neighborhood that are going to be impacted in different ways."
Bepko's advice to herself and others: "Next storm, I’m going to consider the feeder bands to be more of a threat than I’ve learned that they are. It’s not just the inconvenience of being without power, water, or internet for a few days. It might be the inconvenience of being without a roof."
The best bet to stay safe in any storm is to stay alert and stay informed.