Hurricane "Milton", which hit the US, caused less destruction than expected. Or as Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis put it, luckily the worst-case scenario didn't come true.
And yet the destruction is bad: whole areas and countless roads are under water, destroyed houses, overturned trucks and uprooted trees are visible everywhere. Power supply continues to be cut in many places. The death toll is at least 11 so far. The number of victims is expected to rise.
Representatives of the rescue teams share dramatic experiences: "It was after midnight, in the middle of torrential rain, when we managed to get a 2-year-old child and his pregnant mother out of a house," Jeremy Lock of the aid organization "Aerial Recovery" told CNN ;.
How the hurricane hit the US not only in the literal sense
The government in Washington is deeply troubled by the fake news and false claims being spread about the hurricane - for example, the false message on social media that the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was going to seize homes and properties in the affected regions.
Former US President Donald Trump willingly feeds such rumours. During a campaign speech in Detroit, he stated that after "Milton" and the hurricane that hit the US two weeks ago, the Republican governors of Florida, Georgia and North Carolina did a "fantastic job" while the federal government under Joe Biden and Kamala Harris failed at all. At a press conference at the White House, President Biden responded that whoever spreads such lies only undermines people's confidence in rescue operations.
Meanwhile, claims that the two hurricanes were "unnatural" storms - both of which were man-made and were deliberately targeted in pro-Republican districts ahead of the Nov. 5 presidential election.
"Hurricane "Milton" just made another almost impossible turn,'' claimed a user on the X platform, urging his followers to share his video "before it gets taken down.'' He has shared the same post multiple times. "What are the odds of two freak storms right before an election?" asks the same user. "This is not even close to a normal looking storm," he also says in a video on the Rumble platform, hinting that the so-called cloud seeding has affected the storm.
"Yes, they can control the weather,", said Marjorie Taylor Green of the Republican Party, a staunch supporter of Republican candidate Donald Trump, just a few days earlier. Her tweet has since been viewed over 43 million times.
Regarding the suggestion that it could not have been a coincidence that two hurricanes hit the US just before the election, meteorologist Matthew Capucci recalls that in 2004, four hurricanes hit Florida in just six weeks.
"We know that the sea surface temperature, the heat in the ocean, is what fuels events like Milton,'' said Shel Winkley, a meteorologist at the non-profit organization Climate Central. And Ryan Trucellot, a researcher at "Weather Tiger's Hurricane Watch", explains that although it is already possible to artificially induce precipitation with the help of the so-called cloud seeding when heavy clouds are already in the air, similar weather manipulation as in hurricane "Milton" it's just not physically possible. "We humans cannot cause a storm of such force," Winkley assures.
"Those who tell you we can control the weather are wrong. Such rhetoric is at best useless and at worst dangerous," warns hurricane hunter Nick Underwood on Platform H.
And as for the claims that the storms were deliberately targeted to harm Republican voters - the truth is different: it is completely impossible to direct the path of a hurricane. "The speed and path of a hurricane depend on complex oceanic and atmospheric interactions, including the presence or absence of other weather phenomena," the US National Weather Service website says. "This is what makes it very difficult to predict the speed and direction of the hurricane."
However, the economic damage caused by Hurricane Milton can now be predicted, which may go down in history as one of the costliest.
Damage from Hurricane "Milton"
According to the assessment of analysts from the rating agency "Morningstar DBRS" the insurance industry could face damages totaling up to $100 billion. Thus "Milton" could become one of the costliest hurricanes on record. Until now, Hurricane Katrina, which struck the United States in 2005, topped this infamous ranking: "Katrina" caused insurance claims totaling $99.8 billion and total economic losses totaling $201 billion.
"Milton" it will also have an adverse impact on US economic power. About 2.8 percent of the world's largest economy's GDP is directly affected by Milton, said Ryan Sweet, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics. Dana Peterson, chief economist at the Conference Board think tank, also believes the storm will have an impact on GDP and the unemployment rate. Concrete numbers are named by Gregory Dako, chief economist at the consulting company EY. According to him "Milton" will reduce US real GDP growth by an estimated 0.2 to 0.4 percentage points in the fourth quarter. And in the state of Florida, which is most directly affected, GDP growth could drop by three to four percentage points.