Takeaways from Hurricane Milton: The ‘fingerprints of climate change’

While storm surge was lower than feared, destructive tornadoes and heavier rainfall are part of new trend, experts warn.

Florida residents are reeling after Hurricane Milton swept across the state with roaring rains and winds, killing at least 18 people, wrecking more than 100 buildings and causing mass power blackouts.

But as bad as the storm was, experts and local officials are relieved it wasn’t more catastrophic with Governor Ron DeSantis saying the state had avoided a “worst-case scenario”.

Here are key takeaways from the storm:

After emerging in the Gulf of Mexico, Milton exploded into one of the region’s fiercest ever hurricanes in four quick days. From Sunday to Monday, the storm’s wind speed surged from 97km/h (60mph) to 290km/h (180mph), among the strongest in decades.

“The storms you now get grow into monster extreme weather events rather quickly,” Susan Glickman with the CLEO Institute, a nonprofit dedicated to climate education and advocacy, told Al Jazeera. “They are unnatural disasters as compared to hurricanes that we’ve seen for decades.”