Hey Fam! Happy Sunday!
I hope you are well and made it through the storm ok.
Although I am incredibly grateful that Milton was not as bad as was predicted, I know many people in our area are still without power, some are without water, and some had damage to their home or property. If you have suffered due to this storm, my heart and prayers go out to you. Please let us know if you need anything.
To put it all in perspective, I want to break down the timeline of events surrounding Milton, so we can better appreciate the mercy that so many of us were shown.
Milton began to form in the Gulf of Mexico around September 26th, and by October 5th, it was an officially named Tropical Storm. In only a matter of 48 hours, it went from a Tropical Storm to a Category 5 Hurricane with wind speeds over 180mph. It was the fastest intensification to Cat 5 in history.
On Monday October 7th, Milton still had SUSTAINED winds of 180mph, and by Tuesday, about 24 hours before the storm made landfall, it was being predicted to be one of the most destructive storms this area of Florida has ever seen.
After hearing these reports, and after seeing what happened after Helene, many believers throughout the state and the nation began to rise up and pray. Here’s Natalie and I after praying in the Gulf on Tuesday morning.
Out of this fervent intercession, the Lord sent a heavy wind shear towards the storm, weakening in significantly before it hit.
The day of Milton’s landfall, each update showed that the storm was weakening more and more as it approached land. This was from 8am
11am
4pm
Milton eventually made landfall at about 8:30pm on Siesta Key. This is a pic of the eye coming over Sarasota. Pretty wild!
Although they said that Milton made landfall as a Category 3, by the grace of God- the highest wind GUSTS recorded on land were 102mph, which is barely above Category 2 level speed (96mph).
Although still destructive to weaker structures like older mobile homes, carports, signs, fences, sheds, weaker trees and dilapidated homes, that GUST speed is nearly half of what Milton’s SUSTAINED speed was at its peak.
Not long after this, images surfaced of the eye wall breaking down even more as it got to land, which may explain why the wind speeds were so low on land.
Here’s a video that shows this on the radar.
In fact, a person close to Siesta even said this about what it was like as the eye wall was coming through-
And here’s a Siesta resident being interviewed by the Weather Channel, talking about how pleasantly surprised she was to come back to Siesta after the storm and see things look as good as they did.
Here’s that same woman showing more footage of the Key the day after the storm. So cool that she praises God for sparing them all!- https://fb.watch/vbFK9W_Pc-
Now, to be fair, from Venice to Manasota Key there was still about 5-7 feet of storm surge, but not nearly what the 15 feet that they were predicting it would be. North of Tampa still got a lot of rain and flooding, but it also could have been much worse. I am SO grateful that our region was extended as much mercy as we were.
Here’s what our local paper said about it the next day:
Here’s what the secular meteorologist said.
We know that it had nothing to do with Indian burial grounds though, we know it was God. Sean Feucht, a national leader who hosted a prayer meeting for the storm the day before, put it this way:
As I was driving around assessing the damage on Thursday, I asked God to speak to me through a song. Out of over 1000 songs, this one came up on random shuffle:
If you’ve heard the song, you know that it goes “greater things are still be done in this city”, which I believe is the Lord’s way of saying that this storm will spark a move of the Spirit in the city/region.
A very prophetic friend of mine, (who has prophesied accurately over me several times) got this Word shortly after, which I saw as confirmation:
So…let’s believe that! And let’s NEVER forget how God showed us mercy during this storm.
We will be gathering today (10/13) on Siesta, right where Milton made landfall, at 5pm to corporately praise Him for this. I hope you can join us!
More updates to come soon!
Chris