Hurricanes

Florida's official "hurricane season" runs from June 1 through November 30. The highest probability of a serious storm is between mid-August and late October, with the peak around mid-September. The average season produces about 10 tropical storms, of which six develop into hurricanes, rarely impacting Fort Lauderdale. And in some seasons (like 2006 and 2007) Fort Lauderdale had no storms whatsover.

In recent years there has been only one storm that really did a job on Fort Lauderdale. It is fully documented below and in sidebar choices › MyStory and › Photos directly under the Hurricanes choice which brought you to this page.

After destroying Cancún in the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, Hurricane Wilma arrived in Fort Lauderdale, as well as most of South Florida, on Monday, October 24, 2005. There was more than ample warning on TV and radio, best described as feeding frenzies of warnings. But nothing could have prepared us for what followed during that early Monday morning and afternoon of that incredible day.

Hurricane Wilma Street Damage

CRTE lost some of its windows, its lobby interior was devastated, its roof blew off, its foliage was in large part destroyed, its electric power was lost, its water supply stopped, a great many cars were damaged and its cable TV went blank. The interiors of many apartments were wrecked during the storm. Some residents were injured.

Hurricane Wilma Fallen Tree

The entire Coral Ridge complex, as well as everywhere else, was pitch black for 3 nights and a mandatory curfew ordered by the City of Fort Lauderdale was in effect from sundown to sunrise. Our residents became proficient at transporting water from the swimming pool to toilet tanks as the pool noticeably decreased in volume.

Once a hurricane develops, the Saffir-Simpson Scale is used to classify a hurricane's intensity and damage potential. There are five possible categories. Category 1 storms are more common than category 5 storms. In a typical year, there may be many category 1 storms, but category 5 storms occur very infrequently.

• A typical hurricane is 300 miles in diameter (distance from Fort Lauderdale to Jacksonville), but a particularly large one may be up to 700 miles in diameter (distance from Fort Lauderdale to Charlotte NC).
• Hurricanes can create waves taller than 50 feet (5 stories) in the open ocean.
• The worst natural disaster in U.S. history (in terms of lives lost) is the hurricane that killed more than 6,000 people in Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900 (no hurricane names back then).
• The worst natural disaster in U.S. history (in terms of economic devastation) is Hurricane Katrina which destroyed New Orleans on August 29, 2005. Estimated economic loss was about $200,000,000,000 (with over 1200 lives lost).
• Some hurricanes release enough energy to supply the entire United States with electricity for six months.
• The word hurricane comes from the name of the Carib Indians?f god of violent storms and thunderbolts, Hurican.