Page 145 - Winterling's Chasing the Wind

The next day, on August 13, 2004, Hurricane Charley was aimed at the Tampa Bay
area, but a slight jog to the east caused it to slam the Punta Gorda area with 145 mph
winds. It was the first of four hurricanes that passed over Orlando that year. Three
weeks later on September 4-5, the second hurricane, Frances, crossed the peninsula
south of Jacksonville, causing power outages and downing many trees and tree limbs
over northeast Florida. On September 26, Hurricane Jeanne was the third storm to cross
the Florida peninsula. It followed the same path as Frances, adding to a number of
fallen trees and limbs over northeast Florida before the waste removal trucks could
clear neighborhoods of all the debris. Residents who were tired of waiting for trash
collectors were greeted by an unpleasant stench at the recycling area off Phillips
Highway where there was a mountainous heap of soggy decaying material.

The fourth hurricane to slam Florida was Ivan. It was a long-lasting Cape Verde storm
that hit Pensacola on September 16 with a storm surge that swept as much as 20 miles
inland from the beaches along some waterways. The bridges on US 90 and Interstate 10
had severe damage. It continued northward to Virginia and Delaware as an
extratropical storm that turned moved southward off the Carolinas. It crossed south
Florida and crossed the Gulf of Mexico, becoming a tropical storm again that made
landfall in southwest Louisiana.

The hurricane season of 2005 broke the record of having the most tropical storms. The
previous record was 21 in 1933. 2005 exhausted the list of alphabetical names, so it was
necessary to add the use of Greek names Alpha, Beta, Gamma, Delta, Epsilon, and
Zeta, to compile a list of 28 storms. Katrina formed in the Bahamas, intensified over
southern Florida to become a major Category 5 hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico south
of New Orleans on August 28. The northern Gulf coast was warned of possible
catastrophic damage from Katrina. The center hit the Louisiana/Mississippi border as a
strong Category 3 storm. A 20 to 30 feet storm surge on the Mississippi coast caused
massive destruction at Biloxi and Gulfport. Severe flooding in New Orleans was not
caused by the surge, but by 53 levee breaches that had contained Lake Ponchartrain and
the Mississippi River. The death toll there exceeded 1,000, while total lives lost along
the coast was estimated to be 1,836. It was the deadliest U.S. hurricane since the Palm
Beach-Okeechobee storm of 1928.

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