Comments by "John Peric" (@johnperic6860) on "Professor Dave Explains" channel.

@newhybrid101 Helene wasn't really an exceptional storm outside of rainfall. As for Milton, nobody claimed it was normal. It was an exceptional storm, no different than how Dorian, Wilma, Allen, Camille, San Felipe, The Labor Day hurricane, or the great hurricane of 1780.
1
@thomasneal9291 That's not entirely how it works either. If it was, then you wouldn't expect to see the massive storms that occur in the grid Southern Ocean (these are debatably the most powerful storms on Earth). Hurricanes are heat engines, meaning they take a difference in thermal energy and transform it into kinetic energy. A hurricane whose water is only 25C but has cloud tops as low as -100C will be much more powerful than a hurricane whose water temperature is near 35C but has cloud tops of only -30C. This is because the temperature difference of the first hurricane is 125C while the second is only 65C. It's this much larger temperature difference that makes it stronger. In the case of Milton, it had cloud tops as low as -100C and sea surface temperatures of 30C, an extremely large and rare temperature difference only seen in a handful of storms.
1
8:30 small correction, but it's the other way around. The Coriolis effect is weakest at the equator and strongest at the poles. This is why hurricanes rarely form within 500km of the equator. The reason hurricanes form in the tropics is only because of the fact there's lower wind shear, warmer water, and good atmospheric circulation. Edit: 18:50 another correction. There is no evidence that shows an increase in the frequency and intensity of hurricanes (at least in the Atlantic) over the last 140 years. At best the data is inconclusive and there's essentially no consensus on how global warming is impacting hurricane intensity, frequency, and strength (this is coming from the IPCC, NOAA, and AMS). Hurricanes aren't as simple as "warm water". Hurricanes are heat engines and thus require organization and energy gradients. There's no evidence that conditions have garnered increased energy gradients and improved organization. And citing damage as a metric for trends in hurricane strength is very misleading. This phenomenon is not because hurricanes have become more intense or strong, but rather because we have more infrastructure in their path. When normalizing hurricane damage for the amount of infrastructure present, there's essentially no trend in hurricane damage over the last 100 years (within the Atlantic, where data is available).
1