With its mighty strength and its dangerous path, Hurricane Milton powered into a very rare threat flirting with experts’ worst fears. Warm water fuelled amazingly rapid intensification that took Milton from a minimal hurricane to a massive Category 5 in less than 10 hours. It weakened, but quickly bounced back, and when its winds briefly reached 180 mph, its barometric pressure, a key measurement for a storm’s overall strength, was among the lowest – meaning most intense – recorded in the Gulf of Mexico this late in the year. At its most fierce, Milton almost maxed out its potential intensity …