During a Thursday press conference, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R) fired back at a reporter for trying to politicize the hurricanes that have hit his state.
After Florida was hit with both Hurricane Helene and Hurricane Milton, the latter of which caused dozens of tornadoes, one reporter tried to suggest that global warming was responsible for the extreme weather events — prompting DeSantis to educate him on the history of weather in his state.
“I think you can go back and find tornadoes for all of human history,” the Florida governor responded — pointing out that the most recent hurricane to hit his state, Hurricane Milton, wasn’t even very powerful compared to the most extreme hurricanes that Florida has faced in its history.
Highlighting Milton’s barometric pressure of approximately 950 millibars upon landfall, DeSantis explained: “If you go back to 1851, there’s probably been 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric, so the lower the barometric pressure, the stronger it is. I think there have been about 27 hurricanes that have had lower barometric pressure on landfall than Milton did, and of those, 17 occurred I think prior to 1960.”
“The most powerful hurricane on record since the 1850s in the state of Florida occurred in the 1930s, the Labor Day Hurricane, barometric pressure on that was 892 millibars,” he added. “It totally wiped out the Keys. We’ve never seen anything like it, and that remains head and shoulders above any powerful hurricane that we’ve ever had in the state of Florida.”
DeSantis then pointed out that the deadliest hurricane in Florida history was the Okeechobee hurricane in 1928, which left more than 4,000 people dead.
“So I just think people should put this in perspective there,” he said. “They try to take different things that happen with tropical weather and act like it’s something, there’s nothing new under the sun. You know, this is something that the state has dealt with for its entire history, and it’s something that will continue to deal with.”
“I think what’s changed is we’ve got 23 million people, a storm that hits is likely to hit more people and property than it would have 100 years ago, and so the potential for that damage has grown, but what’s also changed is our ability to do the prevention, to pre-stage the assets,” DeSantis added.
“I mean, we never did the pre-staging of power assets until I became governor. Now, people like expect that, but that wasn’t what was done in the past. That’s why people would be out with power for three weeks when we have hurricanes, we thought that that’s not good. Now we have to pay to get these guys to come in, but my view is, the quicker you get everyone hooked up, the better off the economy is going to be anyway,” he continued.
WATCH: Ron DeSantis absolutely nukes a reporter who tried to tie yesterday's tornadoes from Hurricane #Milton to global warming pic.twitter.com/Pj0nENTilZ
— Curtis Houck (@CurtisHouck) October 10, 2024
