Eerily prophetic 2020 simulation of fictional ‘Hurricane Phoenix’ hitting Tampa – as city braces for real life version with Milton

A simulation meant to prepare Tampa for a devastating Category 5 hurricane turned out to be eerily similar to the path Milton is taking as it approaches Florida.

Project Phoenix, published in 2020, combined simulated weather reports and archived video footage from other storms to emphasize the danger of a potential Category 5 hitting the area directly.

The mocked-up forecast said the hurricane would hit Tampa on October 15th in the worst case scenario – with winds at 160mph and wing gusts up to 200mph.

Though Hurricane Phoenix was fictional, the warnings have taken on prophetic significance this week as the nightmare envisioned by Project Phoenix approaches in the form of the very real Hurricane Milton. 

Project Phoenix predicted a Category 5 hurricane in Tampa would cause over 160 deaths and 30,000 missing people, as well as  300,000 people seeking shelter and as much as $200 billion in building damage.

‘The devastation to the region is almost unimaginable,’ the narrator says.

The horrifying scenes used in the simulation show the city’s downtown area underwater, with cars and debris floating around. 

All bridges are depicted as cut off by the storm surge, which is said to be up to 20 feet in some spots.

The simulation also shows medical personnel saying they are trapped on the third floor of the Tampa General Hospital.

‘St Petersburg is essentially an island right now,’ a newscaster says as videos show homes with their roofs torn off by the wind.

The simulation concludes the next day, showing the devastation left behind by the storm, which destroyed the beaches, hospital and most businesses and homes.

Project Phoenix was sponsored by the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and the Florida Department of Emergency Management with the goal of helping local officials prepare for devastating weather events.

The last time the eye of a major storm like Hurricane Milton struck Tampa Bay, in 1921, the city was a sleepy backwater of a few hundred thousand people. A century later, it’s among the fastest-growing metropolises in the United States, with more than 3 million people, and highly vulnerable to flooding due to climate change. 

As Milton barrels toward the Gulf Coast of Florida, strengthening Monday into a Category 5 storm, experts are worried that a century of luck could come to a sudden end.

The National Hurricane Center is predicting storm surge in Tampa Bay and surrounding waters of between 8 and 12 feet above normal tide conditions, and rainfall of between 4 and 6 inches because of Hurricane Milton. 

A 2015 report from the Boston-based catastrophe modeling firm Karen Clark and Co. concluded that Tampa Bay is the most vulnerable place in the U.S. to storm surge flooding from a hurricane and stands to lose $175 billion in damage.

The heightened risk is partially a result of topography. The Gulf of Mexico coastline of Florida is shallow with a gentle, sloping shelf. The higher ocean floor acts as a barrier that retains the storm’s outflow of water, forcing the ocean to surge onto shore. 

That’s the opposite of Florida’s east coast, where the ocean floor drops suddenly a few miles from the coast. 

MIT meteorology professor Kerry Emanuel said a hurricane in Tampa is the ‘black swan’ worst-case scenario that experts have worried about for years. 

‘It’s a huge population. It’s very exposed, very inexperienced and that’s a losing proposition,’ Emanuel, who has studied hurricanes for 40 years, said. 

‘I always thought Tampa would be the city to worry about most.’