New satellite images reveal just how much Hurricane Milton reshaped Florida’s coastline.
Milton, which made landfall on Wednesday night as a powerful Category 3 storm near Sarasota, Florida, had experts predicting it would change the state physically.
The photos shows that the hurricane indeed shifted some parts of the coast, and even split some beaches in half.
Some of the Sunshine State’s picturesque beaches appeared to have fresh breaks in the middle.
Milton created a new inlet just southeast of Stump Pass Beach State Park on Manasota Key, according to storm chaser Brian Emfinger.
Sanibel Island, which is off of Cape Coral, had brown and white plumes perpendicular to its formerly straight coastline. The plumes are sand and sediment feeding back in to the Gulf of Mexico, according to Fox Forecast Center meteorologist Cody Braud.
‘As storms like Milton move ashore, they’re pumping sand and water much further inland than what we’re used to,’ he told the New York Post on Monday.
‘But because there’s been so much storm surge, as things start to recede, everything starts to reverse and get pushed back out.’
Sanibel, and Captiva Island just north of it, looked like they had more sand after Milton and Hurricane Helene, which went ashore on September 26.
‘You’re likely going to see not too much erosion,’ Braud said, ‘But you are getting kind of an enhancement along the shorelines because so much sand has been lifted up off the bottom.’
Water draining out could create new channels that cut beaches in half.
‘As the water moves out, it tries to find any way possible to navigate out,’ Braud explained.
The US Geological Survey had warned that Milton could flood all but 5% of Florida’s beaches. Officials said the threat of erosion was high because Helene had just battered the same region.
‘This is the most severe level of coastal change,’ the US Geological Survey had stated.
Milton killed at least 22 people as of Monday afternoon.
On Friday, President Joe Biden said Milton caused an estimated $50billion in damages, which was far higher than the initial prediction he had shared.
After Helene, satellite images showed its path of destruction in the form of a wide strip of land from Florida up into Georgia and the Carolinas where millions of people lost power.
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