Milton rapidly intensified to a Category 5 hurricane late Monday morning.

Within hours, Milton strengthened to a Category 2, then a Category 3, then a Category 4 and finally a Category 5.

Milton now ranks as the third-greatest 24-hour wind speed intensification for a hurricane in the Atlantic Basin. (Records are based on data since the satellite era began in the 1960s.)

        • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
          533·
          2 months ago

          Jerry Pournelle and Larry Niven wrote a book called Lucifer’s Hammer about a comet hitting the Earth. There’s a part where all the surfers in the ocean off of L.A. know they’re going to die, so they decide to ride the tsunami and get taken out one by one as they get smashed into buildings.

          • grue@lemmy.worldEnglish
            11·
            2 months ago

            Unfortunately, at least from videos I’ve seen of the Indian Ocean tsunami and the Fukushima tsunami, tsunamis don’t really “break” like good surfing waves and instead seem to act more like a large swell that keeps going instead of ebbing.

            (A mega-tsunami from a comet impact might be so large it would act differently, though.)

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
              2·
              2 months ago

              I’ll be honest, it’s one of the least believable parts of a book which overall reads as quite plausible, but it’s a fun chapter. Neither of the authors are/were scientists, so they were bound to get some things wrong. It was also written almost 50 years ago, so I’m guessing the science they did work with has been supplanted in a lot of ways since then.

            • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
              131·
              2 months ago

              Honestly, the whole book would make a great miniseries. Probably too much for just one movie.

              Too bad Larry Niven is and Jerry Pournelle was such right-wing assholes, because their published some great stuff.

        • catloaf@lemm.eeEnglish
          5·
          2 months ago

          No. There’s always a bunch of surfers that go out for hurricane waves. I assume some have a death wish.

      • Tja@programming.dev
        820·
        2 months ago

        Holy fuck people. It says right in the image that it’s in meters.

        So not only lemmings can’t read, a comment asking for info staring you in the face has 55 upvotes… and the wrong answer has 38.