Hurricane Charley Anniversary (6-Years)...

[cdcollura]

Hello everyone...

Friday the 13th, 2004 was the day my group of storm chasers and I chased hurricane Charley in Punta Gorda, Florida. This day (I posted this on 8/13/2010) and this is 6 years after this category 4 storm, and Atlantic hurricane names are re-used every 6 years.

The name, Charley, was ofcourse, retired. Ant this year's (2010) "C" storm to replace it was "Colin", which - When compared to Charley in 2004 - Was like comparing a dust devil to an EF-4 mile-wide wedge (If anyone can even remember "Colin" this year)!

Below is an excerpt from one of my chases in hurricane Charley, and it's a pretty awesome write-up...

Hurricane Charley was intercepted on Friday the 13th (2004) in Punta Gorda, FL with Myself, the "Weathervine" storm intercept team, and a few others including Doug K, Jason F, and Jim Edds.

The best way to describe this is like driving INTO an F3 wedge tornado that is about 20 miles wide and finding the strongest building you can find to safely observe the storm (well, safer, not exactly "safely")!

We encountered 145 MPH sustained winds with gusts to and over 175 MPH ... A strong category 4 hurricane (winds 131 to 154 MPH). Intornado terms, with PEAK 175 MPH winds, this is like a tornado of F3 intensity, just a much wider damage path ;-(

The picture above is the turmoil of flying debris inside the eyewall of Charley in Punta Gorda, FL at about 4PM 8-13-2004.

Here is a view of the eye of the storm looking up inside the calm eye!

Check out more pictures at my web site at the link below...

http://www.sky-chaser.com/char04.htm

 

[Mark Blue]

You are absolutely right Chris! I remember that day so vividly. Right before I left work my wife sent me an email to stop by her desk (we work at the same place). She had a satellite image up of Charley and it had taken a right turn late in the afternoon (EST) towards the Sanibel and Captiva island chain. My wife's sister and her husband own a condo on Sanibel so we were worried about them since they were on the island at the time. Charley worked over Sanibel and Captiva before it took dead aim on Cayo Costa and Punta Gorda. We watched footage on WINK news the next day and were amazed at the damage it had caused on the islands. Ground zero was Punta Gorda though, they literally took the heat.

Thanks again for the reminder as it had slipped my mind today. For some reason Friday, August 13th sounded funny this morning when I thought about it, now I know why!