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The Deadliest Atlantic Hurricanes, 1492-Present
The material in this report is from NOAA Technical Memorandum NWS NHC 47: The Deadliest Atlantic Tropical Cyclones, 1492-1994 by Edward N. Rappaport and Jose Fernandez-Partagas.
The Technical Memorandum was originally published in January 1995. The web version has been updated to the end of the 1996 hurricane season.
Andrew was a small and ferocious Cape Verde hurricane
that wrought unprecedented economic devastation along a path through the
northwestern Bahamas, the southern Florida peninsula, and south-central Louisiana.
Damage in the United States is estimated to be near 25 billion, making Andrew
the most expensive natural disaster in U.S. history. The
tropical cyclone struck southern Dade County, Florida,
especially hard, with violent winds and storm surges
characteristic of a category 4 hurricane on the Saffir/Simpson
Hurricane Scale, and with a central pressure (922 mb) that is the
third lowest this century for a hurricane at landfall in the United
States. In Dade County alone, the forces of Andrew resulted in 15
deaths and up to one-quarter million people left temporarily homeless. An
additional 25 lives were lost in Dade County from the indirect effects of
Andrew. The direct loss of life seems remarkably
low considering the destruction caused by this hurricane.
Full story
Gordon, a complex system, followed an unusual, erratic path over the western Caribbean Sea and islands, Florida and the southwestern Atlantic. Its torrential rains caused a catastrophic loss of life in Haiti and extensive agricultural damage in south Florida.
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