Comment Forecasters and the public had no time to waste 30 years ago this month as they faced one of the wildest US hurricanes on record. Hurricane Andrew hit southern Miami-Dade County around 5 a.m. EST on Monday, August 24, 1992. Intensifying and accelerating en route, Andrew made landfall less than 36 hours after a hurricane watch was issued for the southeast coast of Florida and less than 24 hours after a hurricane warning went into effect. . A decade later, Andrew – initially rated Category 4 — upgraded to Category 5 status, with maximum sustained winds estimated at 165 mph. Andrew claimed 65 lives and cost $27 billion (1992 USD), making it the costliest hurricane in US history until it was eclipsed by Katrina in 2005. Andrew’s toll in Florida — including more than 60,000 homes destroyed and more 100,000 damage — led to major changes in the way structures are built and insured. Thousands of residents were struck by terror as their homes were torn apart in the darkness. The storm also caused extensive damage in the Bahamas and along the central Louisiana coast. “Survivors of Hurricane Andrew suffered psychological scars for life,” said John Morales, a meteorologist at Miami’s WTVJ. Morales’ career began just a year before Andrew at WLTV as the nation’s first Spanish-language television meteorologist. If Andrew arrived today, it would be marked by vastly improved forecasting tools and a transformed communications landscape. And it would hit an area where construction is tougher than storms but also more numerous. A vastly expanded range of forecasting models. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) tracked Andrew with a single global dynamic model and another that combined statistics and dynamics. Other models relied heavily on climatology, persistence, and entrainment (moving hurricanes in the broad steering flow). At the time, models extended for five days at best, while large models now extend for 10 days or more with much sharper resolution. “Thirty years ago, model guidance was sparse and crude compared to today’s plethora of high-resolution global and regional models and their ensembles,” said Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami and a hurricane expert with the Capital Weather Gang . Dramatic improvement on official forecasts. NHC forecasts extended only three days in 1992, and were merely “fine lines” of locations and intensities. As of late Friday night, most of the model guidance still had Andrew offshore on Monday afternoon. In his book Hurricane Watch, Bob Sheets, director of the NHC in 1992, recalled the message to emergency managers and the public that night: They should be careful, but “Andrew is unlikely to affect the state before on Monday at least. “ Since Andrew’s time, track predictions have improved dramatically, both in track errors and “along-track” speed errors. “There’s about the same average error in three-day forecasts now as there was in a one-day forecast back then,” McNoldy said. Other innovations from Andrew include the forecast cone, which debuted in 2002, and the extension of public forecasts to five days in 2003. It’s easy to imagine a forecast cone reaching parts of South Florida for up to four or five days before Andrew struck. However, a storm like Andrew wouldn’t be the easiest to predict. Just four days before hitting Florida, Andrew was barely surviving as a tropical storm northeast of Puerto Rico. In an internal forecast discussion that day, NHC forecaster Hal Gerrish concluded that “some strengthening is possible if Andrew survives through the day.” Small tropical cyclones can intensify and weaken quickly. That just adds to the difficulty of predicting a storm like Andrew, especially its breakneck intensity. “Andrew would still be a challenging storm in 2022,” Eric Blake, deputy division chief of the NHC’s Hurricane Specialist Unit, said in an email. “Our intensity forecasts would be better, but this is a difficult forecast with a small tropical cyclone, so the forecasts will probably have higher errors than our five-year averages.” On the plus side, radars, satellites and dropsondes from reconnaissance flights can now track storms much more comprehensively. Some of these data make today’s much improved dynamical models. Stronger building codes and enforcement. Andrew’s impact was an “eye-opener” for the insurance industry, according to Ian Giammanco, chief research meteorologist for the Insurance Institute for Business and Home Safety (IBHS). “Florida was deemed to have a strong code,” Giammanco said in an email. However, it became clear after Andrew that the code had been poorly implemented. Furthermore, it did not reflect emerging knowledge from wind engineers. Today, shutters and impact-resistant glass are enforced, helping to keep wind and debris from getting stuck inside a structure. In areas particularly prone to windborne debris, roof decks must now be sealed, helping to keep water out even if the roof deck fails. Florida now leads the nation in hurricane-related building codes and enforcement, according to the IBHS. “If Andrew were to happen today, we would absolutely see a reduction in the amount and severity of structural damage to homes and businesses,” Giammanco said. In other ways, however, Southeast Florida may be even more vulnerable to a major hurricane. Higher sea level. Most of Andrew’s damage was caused by the small core of extreme winds. Larger hurricanes are more prone to produce storm surges and torrential rainfall, threats that are affected by human-induced climate change. Even a small rise in sea level at the top of a large wave can intensify flood damage. “With a full six inches of sea level rise since the mid-1990s, a 17-foot storm surge like Andrew could penetrate further inland and damage more communities,” Morales said. “There’s a lot more wealth vulnerable to storm surge or water surge,” said Fox Weather hurricane expert Bryan Norcross, who won widespread acclaim for his 23 hours of coverage at WTVJ Miami during Andrew’s height. A fragmented communication environment. Mobile phones and home computers make it easier than ever to access reliable updates from the NHC and other trusted sources. It’s also easy for inaccurate or misleading information from “social brokers” to catch fire. “I think it’s a lot harder to get a message across to people today, to get them to understand what you’re saying and what you want them to take away,” Norcross said. Norcross also warns that a major cell outage could plunge people into a greater information vacuum than in 1992. At the time, battery-operated televisions and/or radios were common and cable fixed telephones were ubiquitous. More people at risk. Miami-Dade County’s population has grown from about 2 million to 2.7 million since Andrew. Farms and rural towns south of Miami have been overwhelmed by urban sprawl. Another point of concern: There have been no major hurricane landfalls on Florida’s southeast coast since Andrew. The last one before that was Betsy, in 1965. Hurricane Irma, which toppled Andrew as Florida’s costliest hurricane in 2017, swept through the Miami area on a southwest to northeast track. “There’s a whole generation of South Florida residents who have never experienced major hurricane conditions,” Morales said. “There are also thousands of transplants – people who have zero experience in dealing with tropical cyclone emergencies. “Another Andrew in South Florida would lead to heavy economic losses and possible deaths, as well as a region reeling from a years-long recovery effort.”
