The graphic above shows a storm surge of more than 15 feet along a large swath of the western coast of Florida. I have seen NHC information that predicts 15+ feet. This will be historic and catastrophic.
I want to quote from the NHC Discussion:
Milton is expected to maintain major hurricane strength while it
moves across the Gulf of Mexico and approaches the west coast of
Florida. Stronger vertical shear is expected to set in about 24 hours, but even if this causes some weakening, it will not be enough to keep Milton from being an extremely dangerous hurricane when it reaches shore. Additionally, the first stages of extratropical transition may be just underway as Milton is reaching the coast, which could impart some baroclinic energy and slow the rate of weakening. The NHC intensity forecast is close to the top end of the model envelope, which includes the GFS and ECMWF models, since these models should have a better handle on a potential positive trough interaction.
Milton’s wind field is expected to expand as it approaches Florida. In fact, the official forecast shows the hurricane and tropical-storm-force winds roughly doubling in size by the time it makes landfall. Therefore, damaging winds, life-threatening storm surge, and heavy rainfall will extend well outside the forecast cone. It is worth emphasizing that this is a very serious situation and residents in Florida should closely follow orders from their local emergency management officials. Evacuations and other preparations should be completed today. Milton has the potential to be one of the most destructive hurricanes on record for west-central Florida.
This is the HWRF model showing winds at 850mb. While this is not surface wind, it shows what is forecast to be aloft and gives a good idea where hurricane force winds will be.
The NHC calls for weakening of the storm from Category 5 down to Category 4 or even possibly Category 3 by the time of landfall, however unfortunately the system will likely be in the process of transitioning from a tropical system to a non-tropical system, and unfortunately that process adds strength to the system such that the weakening will be less than the categories might otherwise imply.
This is going to be a very large and very catastrophic system.
We are also now close enough to landfall to start looking at rain, and there is no good news there, either:
The red colour shows the 12"-16" of rain areas, while the much larger orange area shows 8"-12". So in addition to storm surge and wind, flash flooding will be a problem in the Tampa and Orlando areas on top of everything else.
Flash flooding will be a problem over a large area of the Peninsula:
Worth noting is how large of an area is under a hurricane warning:
At this point, the spaghetti almost doesn’t matter, as we know generally where Milton will be going, and the effects are widespread enough that the exact track really doesn’t matter much, but the spag is decently tight:
And while I often focus on the spag and the SHIPS model as we’re usually interested in where a system is going and how strong it will be, I’m also downplaying the SHIPS model - not because the information isn’t important, but because it doesn’t add much to the conversation about the severity of the storm, given that it will be more strongly felt than the category might imply over a large area:
Bonus: Milton as seen from the ISS