Hurricane Milton is on track to hit Florida’s west coast Wednesday night or early Thursday morning. Forecasters are now predicting the storm will make landfall south of Tampa, near Sarasota, bringing a life-threatening storm surge to a large swath of the coast and maintaining hurricane strength as it moves across the peninsula.

The Tampa area is still recovering from Hurricane Helene, which killed 12 people in the region and damaged homes and businesses along the coast before it moved north into Georgia and the Carolinas. And that’s challenging both efforts to prepare for Milton and to estimate the potential damage.

On Tuesday evening, Corey George was ticking through his hurricane preparation checklist, refined by 20 years of practice.

“We keep water and basically canned food on hand. We have a whole-house generator that we put in after Hurricane Ian a couple of years ago,” he said.

Later that night, he would put away the trash cans and secure anything that could be blown around the yard.  

“We’ll park one car in the garage and park another one in the yard so that they’re not both taken out, I guess it’s the best way to think about it,” he said.

George lives in Plant City, Florida, just east of Tampa. He’s a lecturer in art at the University of Tampa, which evacuated and is closed through Friday.

George and his wife, who works in disaster management, plan to ride out the storm at home.

“One of the reasons we live where we live … is that we’re further inland and about 100 some-odd-feet above sea level,” he said. “You know, our biggest issue here is just wind.”

While George was hunkering down near Tampa, Jon Schneyer was in Boston, trying to estimate the potential damage to homes like George’s. He’s director of catastrophe response at CoreLogic.

Schneyer’s team uses computer modeling to simulate potential losses for insurance companies, based on a storm’s track and intensity, and the structures in its path.

“What is the structure primarily made out of? Is it a wood-frame home? Is it a masonry construction? These are the things that really influence wind and flood losses,” he said.

This kind of modeling has become more essential as extreme events pile up, and more accurate as technology and climate science have evolved.

But Schneyer said estimating the damage from Milton is more complicated, because Florida’s Gulf Coast is still reeling from Hurricane Helene. There’s a risk of double-counting properties already destroyed.

“In that same vein, there were a lot of properties that were not completely damaged, but compromised,” he said.

So another hit could be devastating. Plus, all the debris crews haven’t had time to clean up yet could become projectiles that cause further damage.

Back-to-back storms could also add to a post-storm phenomenon called demand surge.

“Lumber, roofers, glaziers — the fact that there’s going to be so many people across Florida all demanding for this stuff, it’s going to increase the costs,” Schneyer said.

The economic toll from last month’s Hurricane Helene is just starting to become clear.

Jay Guin, chief research officer at the catastrophe modeling firm Verisk, estimated Helene’s total damage at more than $30 billion — much of it not covered by insurance, because so many people in the storm’s path didn’t think they needed flood insurance.

“These disasters are waiting to happen in many areas. So I think … these risks and hazards need to be modeled accurately, and both insurers and insurance buyers need to make informed choices,” he said.

The models learn from every storm. And with more frequent severe weather, there are, unfortunately, more opportunities to learn.

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