next up "hurricane milton?" Headed for Florida

It is hurricane season and the storms just keep coming. Tropical Storm Milton is headed for Florida and is expected to make landfall by October 9th, Wednesday.  See Tropical Storm Milton could hit Florida as a major hurricane midweek  With the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico being fuel for storms, it is highly likely that Milton will become a hurricane in the next few days.

This will be a challenge for the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) as they have very likely made the response to Hurricane Helene a top priority for all personnel. To then also have to respond to what Milton might bring to Florida (impacting areas south of the Big Bend area that was hit by Helene) will be challenging indeed.

It reminds me of the three big hurricanes in 2017 that hit successive areas of the Gulf Coast, one right after the other. FEMA is not a huge agency personnel wise, somewhere around 20,000 people. A previous FEMA Administrator did make it mandatory that every FEMA employee is eligible for deployment to disaster areas. However, some modicum of disaster response has to remain in other FEMA Regions across the country in order to respond to other disasters that might arise.