Tuesday, October 18, 2011

Not too late for Hurricanes, or is it?

Hello, everyone! First of all, I'd like to thank my 15 followers to the blog. It's definitely a start!
On to the weather....It looks like the 'invest' that is located in the southeast Gulf is not expected to develop into a named storm, but will give us more heavy rain, then bring the first cooler weather down here after it passes on Wednesday. Many believe that after September, we are almost out of the woods for hurricanes. For the real big ones, there is truth in that. However, for southern Florida, actually October has a higher chance of a landfalling hurricane than any other month. Typically the storms this late are weaker, often crossing Cuba first, and then weakening. The dreaded Cape Verde storms from the east are much less likely now. Of course, there are exceptions. It happens to be that the 16-18 of October is a very popular time for these storms locally. In 1906 a deadly storm crossed Cuba, and remained a major cat 3 as it slammed into the Florida Keys. It is most notable for the tragedy when over 100 Overseas Highway workers were killed. For more info, look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1906_Florida_hurricane. It hit Miami as a 100 mph cat 2, and did cause some damage. 
On the same date in 1950, a much more destructive storm hit Miami dead-on. Called hurricane 'King' (they used a different styling of naming then) it had sustained winds of 120 mph, with gusts at the Miami WBO of 150 mph. It was, for Downtown Miami, north Dade and South Beach the 2nd strongest storm of the 20th century. It was a 'mini-cane' in that it had a very small eye and a small wind field. Unfortunately the eye crossed the city, with the geographic center crossing SW 22nd Ave, and the destructive right-front quadrant hitting downtown and Miami Beach. The only saving grace was, besides its size, the fast movement of the storm. Attached is an old map showing the effects and path of the storm.
A more typical October storm also struck here almost the same time (Oct 15-16) in 1999. We remember- Hurricane Irene. While barely of hurricane force, it did drop up to 17 inches of rain, cause 700,000 power outages, and end up costing over 600 million in damages.
With Wilma as late as Oct 25th, and a 1935 storm in November, we still have a little more of the Hurricane season to contend with. Luckily, for the next few days, there are no Kings, Irenes or Wilmas to worry about!



2 comments:

  1. There was an article in the paper with the same name today!

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  2. What? No way! I haven't looked at the paper in some time. Send me the link- this is an odd coincidence!

    ReplyDelete