30th Anniversary of Hurricane Andrew this month

[AtlanticWind]

Hopefully we wont see anything remotely like Andrew this year , but I remember it like yesterday
how quickly South Florida was in the crosshairs with really no Idea where along the coast it was
going to hit even 48 hours out.

It looked like a buzzsaw coming and I have to say it was a pretty unnerving few days and lucky
for me and family that live in Ft Lauderdale we escaped the real fury.

I worked in retail furniture sales and still remember a lady in our store a couple of days later up from south
Miami and she was in our store just walking around in shock, crying and I tried to console her as she
told me she lost everything in her house.

Something that always stuck with me as I follow these storms , how quickly life changing they can be.

[FireRat]

Andrew was such an infamous hurricane and the big one for South FL in modern times. I can still remember how shocking the devastation was, even when watching the news of the hurricane outside the US. I was a kid then but clearly remember the day Andrew destroyed south Miami, and when we moved to Miami in 1994, we could still see signs of the destruction in southern Dade county, the burnt-looking pine trees and even some homes that were still destroyed and just laying there. We were fortunate that we didn't move to Miami in 1992 instead. FL hasn't seen anything close to that until Michael in 2018, and even then that was at the opposite end of Florida. Southeast Florida has been lucky since.

Andrew will forever be remembered, no doubt. Incredible to see that 30 years will have passed this month.

[InfernoFlameCat]

Andrew was one heck of a hurricane. It defined Buzzsaw.

[AtlanticWind]

The NHC will begin on August 14th to recount the evolution of hurricane Andrew on twitter
and facebook to commemorate the 30th Anniversary.

[SFLcane]

I was in Florida city and survived Andrew in 92. Never forget

[blp]

I remember living through Andrew but thankfully escaped slightly north in Miami.

I also remember the feeling prior to Andrew. It had been big drought 27 years since the last major (Betsy 65) and most people really didn't take hurricanes seriously. My house one of the few on the block with shutters. Fast forward now we sit 30 years since the last major to hit Miami-Dade and I think people take it more serious and that is in large part to how ferocious Andrew was. It changed a lot of attitudes.

I am also amazed that we are in a longer drought than pre Andrew. We are very lucky.

[AtlanticWind]

 https://twitter.com/NWSNHC/status/1558877362405646339

[AnnularCane]

I remember watching the tropical update on TWC maybe a day or two before Andrew's birth. Whoever was doing the update (can't remember that) pointed out one particular wave off Africa, noting it had a little twisting motion to it. I perked up a bit at that and wondered if something was actually going to happen...for real? (Yeah, I had almost given up on the season by that point. At the time I had not heard of the infamous bell-ringing or Aug 20 or anything like that.) BOY did it happen!

[Steve]

Still blows my mind how few people died in SFL
considering the destruction and how many storms after that maybe weren’t that vicious but claimed hundreds or thousands more lives. Was kind of tense here but landfall in LA was far enough west that we just got downed limbs and a couple of days off. I walked out my door to go to work because my boss sucked only to smile and turn back around. My wife at the time was 5 months pregnant, and we had to go bum some food from mom’s. Most of the traffic lights were out on that ride.

[cycloneye]

Getting better organized and TWO was written by Lixon Avila.

[cajungal]

I remember Andrew very well. I had just turned 16 and just started my jr year of high school. Was living just north of Houma. The northern eye wall scraped us for hours and 100 mph winds plus higher gusts. I thought that was the worse I been through til Ida came through. Ida the duration was way longer than Andrew that is why we had so much damage. I would I’ve it if anyone from Florida city, Homestead etc could share their story?

[SconnieCane]

As I've mentioned in other threads, I have no real connection to Andrew but I've always felt some sort of kinship with it because it was THE recent major hurricane of record that was talked about in all the documentaries when I was a young budding weather geek in the '90s, and because most people who know me call me Andy (my name is Andre). I wasn't really old enough to remember tracking it in real time, but I was paying attention by the time of the 1995 season, when Opal became the first storm since then to landfall in the CONUS as a major hurricane, so the Andrew comparisons were frequent in the coverage.

It certainly planted a lot of misconceptions about hurricanes in my mind (and I doubt I'm alone in this) that took quite a few years to dispel; among them that:

1.) Metro southeast Florida is the quintessential hurricane landfall spot.
2.) August major hurricanes (and major hurricane landfalls) are common.
3.) The worst hurricanes do most of their damage with wind.

Regarding the third, it is kind of ironic that Andrew became the costliest hurricane in U.S. history for its time despite being a compact, quick-hitting wind machine. Of course, it was later eclipsed several times over by sprawling, unwound surge-makers (Katrina, Ike, Sandy) and stalled out freshwater flooders like Harvey.

[NDG]

Vis satellite loop when it became at TD exactly 30 years ago. Its low latitude definitely helped it stay away from the stable air/dust to its north.

[cycloneye]

[AnnularCane]

Wow...he really was twisting and turning out there.

[cycloneye]

[Iceresistance]

Still blows my mind how few people died in SFL
considering the destruction and how many storms after that maybe weren’t that vicious but claimed hundreds or thousands more lives. Was kind of tense here but landfall in LA was far enough west that we just got downed limbs and a couple of days off. I walked out my door to go to work because my boss sucked only to smile and turn back around. My wife at the time was 5 months pregnant, and we had to go bum some food from mom’s. Most of the traffic lights were out on that ride.

Seems like I remember there being very few deaths from the storm itself, maybe a few suicides related but indirectly to the storm itself and probably some accidents after it passed South Florida.

And people touching live downed powerlines.

[Nuno]

Still blows my mind how few people died in SFL
considering the destruction and how many storms after that maybe weren’t that vicious but claimed hundreds or thousands more lives. Was kind of tense here but landfall in LA was far enough west that we just got downed limbs and a couple of days off. I walked out my door to go to work because my boss sucked only to smile and turn back around. My wife at the time was 5 months pregnant, and we had to go bum some food from mom’s. Most of the traffic lights were out on that ride.

https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/05/us/a ... llied.html

You would find this article interesting. They are just "rumors" after all (outside of Miami-Dade county).

[Nuno]

What was interesting post-Andrew was how certain things just were never fixed. Light poles that were slightly tilted but not knocked over? Left as is.
There was also the woman in Cutler Ridge that didn't receive power back for 15 years after the storm.

[canebeard]

Here is my personal account of Andrew. Fujita and the NHC in their aftermath studies estimated that in my neighborhood sustained winds were 145 mph, with gusts to 175 mph.

https://www.canebeard.com/andrew.html