September 17, 2004
SO LONG, IVAN
Willie Drye, author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, writes for National Geographic that Ivan was almost everything it was cracked up to be:
...25-foot (7.6-meter) waves were already pounding Santa Rosa Island Wednesday around 4 p.m., when the bridges leading to the mainland were closed.
Ivan altered natural forces all along the Gulf Coast Wednesday. Ivan's eye stayed more than 300 miles (480 kilometers) offshore from Tampa Bay, Florida. But as the eye drew abreast of Tampa, it sent a storm surge into the bay that temporarily reversed the flow of the Hillsborough River and caused some flooding in the city.
"It's sure an odd sight seeing the river flow from the bay instead of to the bay," said Alan Snel, a reporter for the Tampa Tribune.
As a former resident of Pensacola and Pensacola Beach, I'm stunned by the photos I've been seeing. I always knew the place was ripe for another pounding by a storm, but the damage is like what we saw from Hurricane Andrew. Just cataclysmic in scale.
Downtown buildings have been ravaged. Boats are on their side blocks from where they were moored. Historic buildings crumbled like saltines.
This one's going to require a lot of help, folks. Posted by Jeff at September 17, 2004 07:53 AM | TrackBack
Comments
Yeah... and it's circling around the eastern South. They project it to head a bit more north, then turn west and head BACK to Alabama again, this time as a tropical depression.
Yay.
Posted by: J at September 17, 2004 05:03 PM