‘It is hurricane season. You are going to have tropical weather,’ the governor says.
In the aftermath of Hurricane Milton, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis on Thursday pushed back on claims that the climate is causing stronger hurricanes.
When asked during a news conference about whether it’s unusual for tornadoes to occur during hurricanes, DeSantis noted, “You can go back and find tornadoes through all of human history,” before citing how intense hurricanes hit Florida in the early part of the 20th century.
“There is precedent for all this in history,” DeSantis said. “It is hurricane season. You are going to have tropical weather.”
Earlier this week, Hurricane Milton developed rapidly near Mexico’s Yucatan Peninsula before it developed into a Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico. It weakened to become a Category 3 storm before it hit Florida’s Gulf Coast on Wednesday evening.
Some researchers, including University of Albany researcher Kristen Corbosiero, have said that they believe hurricanes are becoming more intense due to what they say is a warming climate.
“With more and stronger storms, the chances of a major hurricane hitting the U.S. increase,” Corbosiero said earlier this week.
But DeSantis pointed out that the strongest storm to hit Florida was in the 1930s when the “Labor Day hurricane was head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane we’ve had in the state of Florida,” noting that it was measured to have 892 millibars of minimum central pressure—or the lowest of any storm recorded to have hit the state. Hurricanes are generally stronger as the minimum central pressure drops.
The 1935 Labor Day storm, he said, was the most powerful hurricane to hit Florida since the mid-1850s and wiped out the Florida Keys. The storm had the lowest barometric pressure ever recorded in the Atlantic basin until Hurricane Gilbert, which had a minimum pressure of 888 millibars, in 1988.
“I just think people should put this in perspective,” the governor said. “They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something. There is nothing new under the sun.”
