When Was the Last Time Your Area Has Experienced a CAT 3+?

[gatorcane]

Decided to open this up to everybody.....

Boca Raton - 1947

I just think of all of the construction that has happened since and there has been no major hurricanes. Unbelievable.

Anybody?

[CycloneJim]

Florida Keys, Betsy 1965. Im sure our luck is running out soon. Historically this area gets the most major hurricanes in the U.S.

[Ptarmigan]

October 1949? Hurricane Alicia does not really count.

[Opal storm]

July 2005-Hurricane Dennis

[jdray]

NE Florida:

1964 Dora (was a Cat 3 @ St Augustine)
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at196406.asp

Before that? About 1898 (Cat 4 landfall @ around St Marys River)
http://www.wunderground.com/hurricane/at189807.asp

[OURAGAN]

Hurricane Hugo Septembre 1989 in Guadeloupe, Catégory 4, pressure 942 mb at Landfall, The EYE passed through the Island.
The Eye was over my House.
I wish, you never experienced that.

[tgenius]

Cat 5 Andrew in Miami in 1992.

[vmax135]

South Dade - Hurricane Andrew (1992). Based on the HRD re-analysis of Andrew, my home in South Dade (now Miami-Dade) county, was in-between the 130-135kt (1-min sustained) surface isotachs. Given that the windfield analysis assumes a "marine exposure", and my home is approximately two miles inland from Biscayne Bay, I estimate the actual maximum sustained (1-min) surface winds at my home to have been 125kts with peak gusts between 145-150kts. Ted Fujita's analysis indicated upper F2 (old F-scale) damage on my street, which I have always thought to be a little conservative given the type of construction in my immediate area. I did have an anemometer, but once the power failed (at 3:46 am) the record stopped, just before the power failure, the highest gust it had recorded was 86mi/h. The peak conditions were between 1-1.5 hours later.

-=Michael=-
www.tropmet.com

Here is the HRD's re-analysis of Andrew's surface windfield at landfall... the white dot indicates the location of my home.


Here are some pictures of the damage to my home and neighborhood...

Looking southwest from my front yard, large chunks of my neighbor's roof lie partially in the street and partially on another neighbor's lawn. What's left of a paddle fan can be seen in the lower right corner of the photo, still attached to a piece of the roof.


Looking southeast from the front yard, my two uprooted Coconut palms block my driveway. Though not visible in this shot, a beam from my screened patio enclosure landed right in-between the two cars without touching either.


My pool/patio area, looking northeast. Large pieces of the screened enclosure frame were blown over the roof, and westward across my neighborhood... the larger beams landing in my front yard. Several sections of ceiling collapsed, allowing the wind to force huge amounts of water into my home, soaking all of the interior walls, ceilings, floors, etc... every interior light fixture was completely filled with water!


Here is a very dramatic before and after shot, looking southwest from my sundeck/roof, showing the extreme damage to foliage/vegetation in my area. If you look closely at the lower right of the "before" puicture, you can see the guy wire that is holding the mast for my anemometer.


Here's a shot (looking northwest) of the coastline about two miles due east of my home, all coastal vegetation was completely stripped and boats were lodged into the mangroves from the surge which, in this location, was about 10-12 ft. A military helicopter can be seen flying northbound in the distance.


This is a photo looking northeast along Old Cutler Road, where it borders Matheson Hammock Park, about three miles northeast of my home. The dense canopy of native trees was decimated, either uprooted, snapped or completely stripped. This photo was taken about two-weeks after the storm, once tons of impassable debris was removed from the roadway.


Here is a photo of the research vessel 'Seaward Explorer' that was dragged aground about four miles due south of my home, at the location of the peak (16.9 ft) surge.

[Tampa Bay Hurricane]

1921 category 2 or 3 110 mph- 115 mph
1848 category 2 or 3

No Cat 3+ in 80+ years thank goodness.

[Derek Ortt]

Dora was a cat 2 at landfall, so nobody received major conditions

[wx247]

Never. If it ever did that would be freaky. That being said, this is a great thread. I feel bad for not having much to contribute but I wanted to chime in and say that these types of threads are fascinating. Keep the posts coming!!!

[docjoe]

Hurricane Dennis July 10, 2005

docjoe

[LaPlaceFF]

Hurricane Katrina 2005

[MiamiensisWx]

This is an interesting topic. Although my area (located in eastern Palm Beach County) experienced solid tropical storm and Category 1 winds during the passage of 90KT (105 mph) Hurricane Wilma in October 2005 and received extensive damage (and also took a beating from tropical storm-force winds of 40 mph from Frances in 2004) I have never personally experienced 115 mph one-minute winds or greater. Climatologically this region has not experienced Category 3 winds or higher since the 1940s (via a 1949 Category 3 strike in the West Palm Beach area). Due to the 2004 and 2005 impacts the question almost seems frivolous but I certainly see the merit in this topic!

By the way, great post, Michael (vmax). I believe the Seaward Explorer and nearby Burger King headquarters were very close to the estimated wind swath of Category 5 winds during Andrew along Biscayne Bay (and they were definitely within the peak surge zone of 16.9 feet). The last image shows severe wind damage (in addition to the surge impact). In my opinion it is one of the most impressive Andrew images in southeast Florida. The images of the damage around your house (I have seen these images on the TropMET site) are very impressive. I personally don't believe your location received Category 4 winds (the intact roofing material on some structures despite exposed locations disputes your estimate) but I do believe your vicinity may have received streaks of one-minute Category 3 (intense hurricane) winds. This is just my personal opinion but wind swath maps (including the reanalyzed Andrew one-minute wind exposure swath you posted) can be inaccurate for local locations.

It is important to remember Andrew's symmetry and structure as it came ashore. Andrew was a compact, intensifying hurricane as it made landfall at Elliott Key around 4:35 a.m. EST on August 24 and crossed over Biscayne Bay and made a second landfall on the Florida mainland (Fender Point near Homestead). While your location may have been within the Category 4 wind swath depicted in the reanalyzed one-minute wind exposure data (AOML), winds are not evenly distributed. Winds (even one-minute sustained winds and notably gusts) form eddies and gyres. Objects (structures, trees, and other obstructions) can result in extreme gusts (as evidenced during Wilma across southern Florida) and great variations in sustained winds even within less than a block; thus, nearby structures in exposed locations may receive the full force of Category 1 winds (or greater values) while nearby protected structures (shielded by shrubbery, automobiles, trees, or even other buildings) receive much lower sustained winds for greater periods of time. The effect can be magnified in a small, intense hurricane (such as the 1935 hurricane in the Keys, Charley in 2004, and Andrew) with a compact, strengthening eyewall and high surrounding pressure gradient (Andrew's gusts and mesovortices were intensified by a strong 500 mbar upper-level ridge to the north of this rapidly intensifying hurricane). In addition, note that Andrew's maximum one-minute winds (upper-end Category 4 or Category 5 intensity) were mostly restricted to the immediate shoreline on the south Florida mainland and over water between Elliott Key and Cape Florida within very small streaks. Friction plays a role in the small radius of maximum winds (per one-minute values) in many hurricanes, confining these values to small areas offshore or at the immediate coastline (where friction is lower).

In a short summary, while more exposed locations in your vicinity to the east and south may have likely received sustained Category 4 winds, your location evidently was within a more sheltered location (due to trees, fences, and other structures surrounding your home and the resulting overland friction) and consequentially may have received lower one-minute values (and lower gusts). I do believe nearby locations in more exposed areas may have received considerably higher values and gusts (especially at the immediate coast and mangroves fronting Biscayne Bay) but this is just my personal analysis. Hurricanes are fascinating creatures indeed! On a side note, I hope we experience no landfalls in 2007 but I wish the best chasing experience for you and your team when the time comes and we are under the gun!

[vmax135]

Hi MiamiensisWx - Thanks for the comments and the compliment on the post, photos and website. I completely respect your opinion... I am not swayed in my estimate... but I do respect your position. I am still completely confident that, during Andrew, maximum sustained surface winds at my home were 125kts, with peak gusts between 145-150kts.

I do completely agree with your assesment of Andrew's eyewall dynamics during the landfall period. The HRD re-analysis windfield does a good job of describing Andrew's overall surface wind distribution, and you are correct in identifying that the highest 'ambient' surface winds were likely right near the coast, about 4-5 miles south of my home. That said, the actual 'strongest' surface winds were observed between 4-6 miles inland, in the communities of Naranja Lakes, Leisure City and Pinewood Villas. These winds were not part of the ambient flow, but were produced by extremely intense, high-speed, transient convective cells that developed over the northern eyewall, rapidly intensified while rotating through the western eyewall, and finally decayed in the southern eyewall. These cells produced incredibly violent microbursts, which augmented the ambient winds, resulting in very narrow streaks of peak gusts between 175-180kts with 5-10 second durations. These winds produced this type of damage...





In their early stages, as these cells rotated from the northern through western eyewall, several of them passed directly over my neighborhood/home, as is evidenced by the following sequence of radar images during Andrew's landfall period...

In this sequence, the first transient (I've labeled A1-5) develops just offshore the King's Bay area and rotates onshore. At position A2, the northern portion of this transient is over my neighborhood. Also note, at this same time, the observer at the Tamiami airport (farther inland, about 4 miles due west of my home) reported that the anemometer needle became "fixed" at the high end of the scale... 110kts... for 3-5 minutes before the instrument was destroyed. He observed that conditions continued to deteriorate for an additional 30 minutes after that. Over the next seven minutes, between positions A3-A5 the transient reaches it's peak while moving over the communities of Homestead and Florida City. Also, in position A4, the next transient has already moved onshore and is again directly over my home. This next transient coincides with positions A4.1 and A5.1 which indicate the location of the NHC/TPC at the exact time that they recorded their 142kt gust (albeit at 40m), which disabled the anemometer....note that the NHC/TPC is actually outside of the transient and is north of my home by about 5 miles.


In this next sequence, which picks up from where the previous leaves off, the next transient (B1-5) has already moved onshore and is past my home on it's way south through the western eyewall. During the next 8 minutes this cell explodes and between positions B3 and B4, reaches a peak directly over the Naranja Lakes/Leisure City area. It is likely that this is the cell that produced the 175-180kts gusts, resulting in the incredible wind damage observed in the photos above. At position B5, yet another transient has developed in the northern eyewall and can be seen approaching the southern end of Key Biscayne.


In this last sequence, the cell that developed near Key Biscayne (D1-5) is now rotating onshore, again, directly over my home at position D2. This transient goes on to intensify and affect the extreme western portions of populated Dade county, over the Redlands area.


In conclusion, I completely agree that the complexity and dynamics of surface windfields, especially within the eyewall of extreme tropical cyclones, are very difficult to estimate and I would add that it's almost as difficult to understand the nuances to the way damage occurs within areas affected by those extreme winds. All that said, with my home's location very near the RMW in the northern eyewall, the persistent development of intense convective elements that rotated across my neighborhood, the incredibly steep gradient Andrew was producing (from 992mb at Miami International to 922mb in the Naranja area... a 70mb drop in just over 20 miles), the rapid forward motion of the storm which was augmenting the steepness of the gradient, the rapid intensification producing a strong isallobaric component to the gradient, several other wind readings (in addition to the ones already mentioned) very near to my home... 154kts (at time of failure) three miles to my south-southwest; 148kts one mile due west; 139kts (at time of failure) two miles west-southwest; 149kts (at time of failure) six miles west-southwest... (here are those wind readings shown in the NHC preliminary report), and with my numerous experiences and observations in other tropical cyclones, I will stand firmly by my estimate of 125kts gusting to 145-150kts at my home.

-=Michael=-
www.tropmet.com

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

Probably Edna in 1954.

Prior to that once, perhaps twice in 1869; "Great Semptember Gale of 1869" and "Saxby Gale".

[wxman57]

Hurricane Katrina 2005

You are aware that Katrina is estimated to have produced only 60-70 mph 1-minute winds in your LaPlace, right? There were likely gusts to Cat 1 strength, though. Possibly even a brief 3-second Cat 2 gust. Betsy in 1965 may have produced stronger wind in New Orleans than did Katrina, even though it passed well to the south.

[Hurricanehink]

1804 or 1821, I would guess. Does that mean we're overdue? I sure hope not!

[Janie2006]

1804 or 1821, I would guess. Does that mean we're overdue? I sure hope not!

Technically speaking, yes. New Jersey has a much greater lapse in time for landfalling tropical systems than many locations further south and west, but I'm pretty sure you're well overdue.

That doesn't mean much, really. Its an average, and much of the time I don't bother with averages. During any given year things happen which toss those numbers right out of the window. One could hit NJ this year, or it might be another 50 years.

[Hybridstorm_November2001]

1804 or 1821, I would guess. Does that mean we're overdue? I sure hope not!

The inward curving coastline naturally protects you; like how Cape Cod and SW Nova Scotia get clipped, and even hit, more often than SW NB/SE Maine does because of the jutting nature of the landmasses. New Jersey, while further south, is even more protected than SW NB/SE Maine, because the inward curve is even more pronounced in relation to the prevailing offshore (30 to 50 North)Westerlies. Hope that helps answer your question.