Andrew Anniversary

August 23, 2002

Andshrt2

Provided by: Hank Brandli
Summary authors & editors: Hank Brandli; Jim Foster

This is the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Andrew's destructive romp across southern Florida and Louisiana. The above image of Hurricane Andrew was taken from the 450 mile (720 km) high NOAA-10 polar orbiting satellite on August 24, 1992 at 8:30 a.m. (Eastern Daylight Time). This visible image was the first daylight image of Andrew after it crashed ashore, south of Miami, during the night of August 23. Andrew was one of the most powerful hurricanes to ever hit Florida and the most costly US natural disaster - it was almost 7 times more costly than the next costliest US hurricane, Hurricane Hugo in 1989.

Andrew clobbered southern Dade County, Florida especially hard. Originally considered a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir/Simpson Hurricane Scale, Andrew was just recently upgraded to a category 5 storm. Andrew had a central pressure of 922 mb, which was the third lowest this century for a hurricane at landfall in the US. In Dade County, Florida alone, 40 people lost their lives either directly or indirectly because of Andrew, and approximately 1/4 million people were left temporarily homeless.

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