You Tell Me

[brunota2003]

And before you guys go, how can you say that was ONLY a Cat 1, take a look at these pictures: That was ONLY from strong TS winds, which was from an 85 MPH Hurricane off the coast of NC known as Pain in the Butt Ophelia, when you can explain those, then complain about Wilma, I'm still seeing tarps on SCHOOLS around here from ONLY a Cat 1, which we ONLY got TS winds from, so maybe some people need a gut check, guess what, anything with the word HURRICANE before its name is going to be bad, welcome to the 2005 Hurricane Season...

[sponger]

Looks like tornando damage or possibly a microburst. You cannot fathom how widespread the damage is in Broward County.

[DESTRUCTION5]

And before you guys go, how can you say that was ONLY a Cat 1, take a look at these pictures: That was ONLY from strong TS winds, which was from an 85 MPH Hurricane off the coast of NC known as Pain in the Butt Ophelia, when you can explain those, then complain about Wilma, I'm still seeing tarps on SCHOOLS around here from ONLY a Cat 1, which we ONLY got TS winds from, so maybe some people need a gut check, guess what, anything with the word HURRICANE before its name is going to be bad, welcome to the 2005 Hurricane Season...

Big difference between a Coastal Storm surge with a storm blowing 80 MPH as it drifts 1 MPH for 2 days compared to Wilma Moving 30 MPH NE off the coast...

[brunota2003]

most of that isnt surge, we dont have big high-rises here though, that makes the damage 5x worse than what it is, they should be thankful they didnt have a true Cat 3 come thru there... just my $0.02...oh, here:

[jlauderdal]

That this was caused by a Cat 1 Hurricane...... http://lan.atlaspencil.com/hurricanewilma.html

i dont know what we were hit with but increase it a category or god forbid 2 and south floirda will be at a complete standtill. 9 days no power and there is another 500,000 people to go, traffic lights barely evident in broward county and debris piles in front of all houses..this was a real scene and continues to be.

[HeatherAKC]

Dr. Jonah Rainwater
Posted: Wed Nov 02, 2005 1:28 pm Post subject:

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Actually, it doesn't look any worse than Katrina's Cat1 landfall in South Florida

I guess this proves that looks can be deceiving.

[Downdraft]

Looks like what I would expect in a Cat 1 hurricane. People simply fail to realize that a storm is a complex multicell entity. Microbursts, downdrafts, vortexs and a whole variety of things all going on at once. Your pictures are a good reason why some of us in here get so sick and tired of hearing "it's only a Cat 1."

[jasons2k]

Looks like solid Cat. 1 sustained with higher gusts to me.

Just to give you some reference - see that Billboard picture (7th one from the bottom)? After Rita, in Lousiana along I-10 (which is well inland), I saw one of those large steel billboards, just like that one, with the pole snapped in half.

[f5]

imagine Andrew going over downtown Miami

[skysummit]

Actually, it doesn't look any worse than Katrina's Cat1 landfall in South Florida. I can believe that damage was caused by a Cat1. I mean, think about straightline winds. Out here in the Texas prairies, we have lines of severe thunderstorms that can sometimes carry winds of 50-60mph, sometimes with higher gusts. They only last about as long as the thunderstorm, perhaps half an hour, but I would not be surprised to see straightline winds cause all of the damage I saw in those pictures. Mobile homes are no match for genuine straightline winds either, and an unsupported brick wall isn't the most secure structure to begin with. Shingles always go flying, and debris like that probably caused alot of those broken windows you see, and trees and power lines wouldn't even stand up to a strong tropical storm. The only additional thing you had was the surge, which even at 6-10 feet, could easily flip those cars. Think about how powerful a fast-moving flash flood is. They only need to be a few feet deep, and it's right along the beach.

What's really scary is that Wilma might become more expensive than Andrew...without actually doing any real structural damage aside from mobile homes. The post-Andrew building codes have saved South Florida from the prospect of structural damage outside of an enormous landalling Category 4 or 5, but there are just so many soft targets that price tags near Andrew, Wilma, Charley, and Ivan may become routine every time a major hurricane strikes the Florida peninsula. Even Frances became like the 5th costliest hurricane (after Hugo, as of 2004) just by striking Florida as a Category 2. Keep in mind, West-Central Florida and Northern Florida still haven't been tested at all, meaning that none of their "soft targets" have been weeded out yet, meaning that a Wilma-type storm striking the Tampa area sometime in the future may end up being just as costly as Wilma, and Wilma was actually a fairly routine situation in the Gulf of Mexico in October. It probably won't be very many more years.

Exactly, sustained 50 mph winds to the average joe, may seem like Cat 1. Then when they have a gust to 99 mph, they think they just had a gust to 130 mph.

Very good point. Those pics seem like Cat 1 sustained winds with gusts to Cat 2. If people never experienced a hurricane before (and I mean in the eyewall, or actual cane force winds), they wouldn't realized how strong even a 60mph wind is.

[T'Bonz]

Could you tell us from what city/cities these pictures are?

The ripped porch one looks like a porch in my mother's complex in Margate.

Some of the areas look like Ft L, others like Naples. I could be wrong....