2004’s hurricanes challenged forecasters with their eccentricities
Norcross said the storms of 2004 were all very different.
Tiny Charley exploded from a Cat 2 to a Cat 4 in just five hours. Frances ballooned, dawdled, stalled then shambled ashore at 7 mph. Ivan lived for 22 days as a classic Cabo Verde storm – the scariest kind. Jeanne did a loop southeast of Florida then punched the gas toward the Treasure Coast.
But Charley was first. It crossed Cuba in only 90 minutes, reaching Cayo Costa in Lee County on Friday, Aug. 13 with 150-mph winds. It was the strongest hurricane to hit Florida since Cat 5 Andrew’s 165 mph landfall in 1992.
It left a fretful impression, tossing a manatee from Estero Bay onto Fort Myers Beach, trashing mobile homes along the Peace River and causing the iconic Shell Factory’s sign in North Fort Myers to lose its S so that it aptly read “Hell Factory.”
“It’s a day I’ll never forget,” said Dan Brown, branch chief of the Hurricane Specialist Unit at NHC.
Brown worked in the Tropical Analysis and Forecast Branch at the NHC in 2004 and was supporting the lead forecaster during Charley. His parents were in Bonita Beach.
“My parents were in harm’s way. It was making a right turn and rapidly strengthening,” Brown said.
But Charley’s damage was mitigated by its speedy 20 mph tear through the state and hurricane winds that reached just 5 to 6 miles from center. Brown’s parents lost electricity but had little to no damage.
Charley’s track is still a sore spot for some. Although its landfall was within the cone of uncertainty, just 12 hours ahead of landfall the center of the forecast path was still taking it toward the west-central coast of the state closer to Tampa.
Just a small deviation aimed it farther south instead.
“Most of the emergency managers understand that even with satellites and radars and computer models, the atmosphere is so complex, we are never going to have a perfect forecast,” Mayfield said. “A lot of us understand that, but a lot of people in the public do not.”
Mayfield said a FEMA official called him after Charley and asked if that was it for the season.
It was just the beginning.
Frances was a long-lived Cabo Verde storm that formed as a depression on Aug. 24. It proceeded as expected until its steering winds went slack, it slowed, and grew corpulent with hurricaneforce winds extending up to 85 miles from its center. When it reached Hutchinson Island at 1 a.m. Sept. 5 as a Category 2 storm, NHC specialists wrote “finally” in their forecast.
It was still crawling, however, and some areas spent more than 24 hours buffeted by dangerous winds. Power outages affected up to 6 million people. Ice was like gold, all intersections became four-way stops with no traffic lights working, roofs were peeled back, the Lake Worth Pier was in pieces and curfews were enacted.
“Decision-making in a time like this is incredible,” said Weisman, who was not a fan of curfews. “I felt a very high level of responsibility to make the right calls.”
Ivan was another classic Cabo Verde hurricane fortified by at least three bouts of rapid intensification on its journey into the Gulf of Mexico. Ahead of landfall, hurricane-force winds extended approximately 105 miles from its center with tropical storm-force winds reaching 295 miles. It crashed into Alabama in the inky darkness of 2 a.m. on
Sept. 16 as a Category 3 hurricane.
Ivan’s storm surge reached 10 to 15 feet from Destin, Florida to Mobile Bay. Perdido Key was leveled.
But it wasn’t enough to harry just the Gulf Coast. It produced an outbreak of about 115 tornadoes over three days and through nine states. Torrential rainfall of 3 to 7 inches spread from Alabama to New England.
“This isn’t what we normally see,” said John Cangialosi, a senior hurricane specialist with the NHC, about the widespread impacts of Ivan.
Then there was Jeanne. Despite forming near the Leeward Islands on Sept. 14, Jeanne teased Floridians for more than 10 days as it meandered in the Atlantic, crossing its own track before reaching Hutchinson Island Sept. 26 as a Category 3 hurricane.
“It wasn’t clear at all where Jeanne was going to go until it finally started to move and it was like ‘Oh my God, can you believe it went into the same place!’” Norcross said.
At one point, Weisman exhaled, thinking Jeanne was no longer a threat as it pirouetted off the coast. But it was a double bruising for Palm Beach County and devastating for Martin County just three weeks after Frances.
“It was insult to injury,” said David Sharp, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service office in Melbourne.
People were living under blue tarps, had used up their hurricane supplies, and there was still debris everywhere from Frances, which provided more ammunition for Jeanne.
“It was starting to damage the psyche of the people,” Sharp said. “Jeanne was about the people, and perseverance.”
From destruction to opportunity
There was some good that came out of the 2004 hurricane season, and subsequent havoc of 2005, Mayfield said.
When then-President George W. Bush visited the NHC, Mayfield passed along a wish list of equipment and personnel the NHC needed.
Added to the NHC’s budget was money for four more hurricane specialists and additional equipment, such as Step Frequency Microwave Radiometers for Hurricane Hunter airplanes. The radiometer can measure the surface wind speeds over water by analyzing the amount of sea foam stirred up.
Before the radiometers, forecasters estimated wind speeds based on what the airplanes could measure at 10,000 feet.
“It wasn’t a terribly busy season in terms of total numbers,” Norcross said about 2004. “But these were all extremely different storms and they came one after another. It was nonstop.”
Early forecasts for the 2024 hurricane season are predicting another over-achieving year for tropical cyclones as the storm abetting La Niña teams up with ocean water that is 3 to 7 degrees warmer than normal. It’s enough of a concern that Florida Division of Emergency Management Director Kevin Guthrie said the state is preparing for a year similar to 2004.
The ‘mean season’ in 2004 proved costly in lives and damage
● Charley:
10 direct deaths, 25 indirect deaths, damages $15.1 billion
5 direct deaths, 42 indirect deaths, damages $9.50 billion
25 direct deaths, 32 indirect deaths, damages $18.02 billion
6 direct deaths, no indirect deaths included is storm report, $7.66 billion
*More than 3,000 people in Haiti died in Jeanne.
Source: National Hurricane Center post-storm reports with damages updated in 2011