Milton, that is.

BTW if you say one word about the lie of "climate change" (yes, the climate is always changing, no, we're not doing it) or "the government is aiming hurricanes at red folks" you will be blackballed from my life and anywhere I can influence and you don't get to take it back either.  Think long and hard before you run that shit around me; I lived in Florida for 20 years, including 2004 which was a "oh its a new week and there's another fucking hurricane coming" year.

As for this storm being "unprecedented" no it isn't.  Nor is it likely (at all) to maintain its monster status all the way to impact.  Doesn't matter; its going to suck and, if it goes where I think it will if you're around Tampa its going to suck badly.  Tampa is blessed to a material degree with geography in the way the coastline lays but a straight-in west-to-east path that goes in just north of town will hose people badly due to the bay getting water rammed up it, which is exactly what it looks like is going to happen.

That has happened before but the last time it did there were a lot fewer people.  And further, the barrier islands in the area were and are, well, barriers.  Now they're full of very high-value homes and such.  Well, as of today they are anyway.  Get back to me in a couple more days on that.

Florida has two basic problems: The two "economic drivers" are tourism and construction.  The former is ok but subject to economic downturns, of course, but the latter is subject to corruption, that's been a huge problem all the way back to "swamp land sales" and today its found in alleged standards that aren't followed and nobody goes to prison when it happens.  In addition there has been a "re-pricing" of plenty of places that were originally concrete block (good) and considered entirely reasonable to fill up with water and sand when the storm comes, then be shoveled out and the contents discarded when originally built -- but then they got all dolled up and sold for 20-50x their original price and "value."  The problem is that they're still at the same 5' elevation off the water they were before and thus the same thing happens when the surge shows up but now the damage is ridiculous and after a few rounds on that bull nobody wants to write insurance since the next loss is definitely going to come.  Big shock, right?

Again if the place was $100k and the contents considered disposable nobody would really care much.  Yeah, its a risk but the $10k you lose between the shitty furniture and shoveling out and pressure-washing the cinderblock is the price of living in paradise and thus you suck it up and pay.  But when that same place is all dolled up and now sells for $2m or more with a half-million or more in contents on top of it you have a different story and much wailing -- or worse, you bought the cinderblock place, got out the Cat D8 and put up a $3-5m Taj Mahal where the "we know it will get full of sand when the storm comes" thing once stood.

The boat situation has gotten untenable as well.  Guess what -- boats in unprotected places during a storm turn into pinballs. If they just sank well that would be on you but that's not what happens; they get loose and wreck everything they hit.  Unfortunately most of the marinas of reasonably recent construction are not in protected places -- after all, we need mooooaaar of them because people want boats, and so up they go.  Then the storm comes and every boat in there gets destroyed -- and that problem is made worse when the owners do not live there and thus can't, several days in advance when the first hint of trouble appears, move the boat out of the range of danger, which is often the case -- or they just choose not to!  Oh yeah, insurers all demand (these days) written hurricane plans but that doesn't make the 25 ton pinball not bash around for 8 hours if the dude isn't there.  I saw plenty of that in my 20 years, including some vessels that appeared to me to be intentional sales to the insurance company -- of course I can't prove it -- but the ground tackle and/or lines they were using were either the product of someone's Three Stooges level of competence or intentional and again, it doesn't matter which if you're on the receiving end of said pinball.  (BTW I took zero damage from the storms to my vessels in the years I lived there and no, it wasn't blind luck either -- well, except for the kicked-off tornado during Ivan I saw on TV headed straight for where she was that could have easily gotten Gigabite despite my best efforts.  God missed, thankfully.)

When it comes to the politics of this its really quite-simple on a state political level: They all love the wreckage.  Oh there is plenty of crying for the camera and stern-eyed concern but the truth is much simpler when you get down to it: GDP is GDP and every dollar spent on rebuilding someone's illegally-signed-off construction which didn't actually meet requirements, and then is permitted to be put back together right where it was as it was is a dollar of the "economy" that the state claims is "booming."  The part they forget is that the "boom" came in the form of a hand grenade up your ass as a consequence of all the grift and fraud in the first place including the permitting that never should have allowed said Taj Mahal style construction, particularly on barrier islands.  Never mind the ambulance chasers in the form of "public adjusters" and similar bullshit that always show up after these storms.  And can we talk about the deliberate interference against reasonable mitigations run by, for example, municipalities that do not encourage or even require that all trees within the fall line of a residential roof be cropped back to below said point or removed?  Indeed some even go so far as to prohibit taking said trees out or require pre-approval and permits to do so -- on your own land.

At least I didn't have that problem where I lived -- Mr. Saw got some use right after I bought the place down there and a few years later, when Ivan showed up, I was glad I did.  I don't know if those trees would have come down and hit the house or not but they can't if they're not there and if they are there, and do come down on your roof, you're boned.

I left Florida about five years ago for these reasons.  No, storms were not going to get more-intense, but the stupidity and grift was going to continue to be a problem, that insurance issues it causes were accelerating and like it or not I was going to be forced to pay for it if I remained.  There are no "grift-free" places in this country and corruption is everywhere but there are those places that have more of it than others, and some that have structural incentives in their economy for it to explode exponentially, and sadly Florida had turned into that over the previous 20 years.

Two days ago I called the most-likely impact location to be between Hudson and Crystal River while plenty of "professionals" were wishcasting it south so Tampa would be on the "cleaner" side and, while it would still take a beating, wouldn't get the crazy surge.  I called it like I saw it and it looks like its going to verify, but there is still plenty of time for me to be wrong.  The southern end of my expected impact envelope is about as bad as it gets for Tampa Bay and its environs (e.g. Clearwater Beach and south all the way into the inlet) and a bit north won't help much.  Inland this thing will track pretty close to Orlando; we'll see what it does there as well.

As for strength the good news is that it likely peaked last night -- and as it comes in closer while it will expand in size it should run into a buzzsaw of shear that should do some serious damage to maximum wind levels.  Unfortunately that will do little or nothing when it comes to surge up the bay in particular and who knows what sort of actual construction integrity you have under that pretty roof particularly in the Tampa area which hasn't been "tested" it his regard.  My bet: There will be plenty of roofs flying around in pieces testing the integrity of your window protection (and possibly wall construction integrity as well.)

If you're where you can get nailed by that get out.  Take a look around the Treasure Island Causeway at all the boats and tell me whether you'd like a few dozen of them to play pinball with your house, because that is exactly what is likely to happen.

The exception is if you've ridden out a decent storm in previous years and you're comfortably above the expected surge  level where you are.  Unfortunately for Tampa proper they haven't been hit with anything material in a very long time so exactly zero of their buildings have been battle-tested.  This is not true further south and north of course, but it sure is within Tampa and the immediate surrounding area.

I ain't liking this one.