Hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall in Florida, a spate of unusually strong and long-lived tornadoes touched down across the state, flipping tractor-trailers and ripping off roofs.

The twisters surprised anxious residents, even as the storm’s eye still loomed. Authorities said there had been “multiple” deaths after the intense and destructive tornadoes.

Meteorologists had warned well before Milton’s approach that tornadoes could be among the storm’s four chief hazards, along with damaging winds, flooding rains and storm surge. But even experts did not foresee the severity of the tornado outbreak — which could end up being one of the most active on record in the tornado-prone state.

“Normally you only get a couple of these hazards,” Jamie Rhome, director of the National Hurricane Center, told CNN. “To get all four like this, to converge, is truly unusual.”

While tornadoes are common hazards at the fringes of tropical storms, it is unusual for a hurricane to spin up so many damaging and long-lived cyclones.

“Typically the stronger the hurricane is when it makes landfall, the more likely it is to see tornadoes from the outer bands,” said Jana Houser, an atmospheric scientist at Ohio State University. “This does seem to be on the high end of what one might expect for warnings in a hurricane.”

‘A life-threatening situation’

Tornadoes downed trees and damaged fences and patios across Martin and St. Lucie counties, and flipped a truck on Interstate 95 in Martin County, the Weather Service said. One passed directly over an airport in West Palm Beach, where a wind gauge reported a 92 mile-per-hour gust — a level that could mean it was at least an EF-2 tornado.

Multiple twisters prompted the Weather Service to warn of a “particularly dangerous situation,” a label they apply only rarely, when long-lived, strong and violent tornadoes are possible.

“You are in a life-threatening situation,” a tornado warning issued at 2:17 p.m. said. “Flying debris may be deadly to those caught without shelter. Mobile homes will be destroyed. Considerable damage to homes, businesses, and vehicles is likely and complete destruction is possible.”

Hurricane Milton spawns destructive, deadly tornadoes before making landfall

Multiple powerful tornadoes ripped across Florida hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall on Wednesday night

Multiple powerful tornadoes ripped across Florida hours before Hurricane Milton made landfall Wednesday, tearing off roofs, overturning vehicles and sucking debris into the air as the black V-shaped columns moved through.

Deaths were reported in St. Lucie County on Florida’s Atlantic Coast, but local authorities did not specify how many residents had been killed.

By Wednesday evening, more than 130 tornado warnings associated with Milton had been issued by National Weather Services offices in Florida.

The appearance of tornadoes before and during hurricanes isn’t unusual, scientists say, but the twisters’ ferocity was.

“It’s definitely out of the ordinary,” said Northern Illinois University meteorology professor Victor Gensini. “Hurricanes do produce tornadoes, but they’re usually weak. What we saw today was much closer to what we see in the Great Plains in the spring.”

Tornadoes spawned by hurricanes and tropical storms most often occur in the right-front quadrant of the storm, but sometimes they can also take place near the storm’s eyewall, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. The heat and humidity present in the atmosphere during such storms and changes in wind direction or speed with height, known as wind shear, contribute to their likelihood.

“There’s an incredible amount of swirling going on,” Gensini said of the conditions that allowed for the twisters to grow. “Those tornadoes were just in a very favorable environment.”

The warming of the oceans by climate change is making hurricanes more intense, but Gensini said he did not know of any connection between human-caused warming and the deadly tornadoes that Floridians experienced with Milton.

Approximately 12.6 million people in the state were facing potential exposure under a National Weather Service tornado advisory in place until Wednesday night.

Videos posted to Reddit and other social media sites showed large funnel clouds over neighborhoods in Palm Beach County and elsewhere in the state.

Luke Culver, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Miami, said he wasn’t sure whether Milton had spawned a record number of tornados, but he pointed out that only 64 Florida tornado warnings were associated with Hurricane Ian, which hit the Tampa Bay area as a massive storm in 2022.

Florida has more tornadoes per square mile than any other state. But they’re usually not as severe as those in Midwest and Plains. However, a big outburst of powerful twisters killed 42 people and injured over 260 in Central Florida in the space of a few hours in February 1998.