About The Editor

Dr. Tim McGuinness

 

Tampa Bay Area, Florida

I am an empirical scientist, with degrees in: Engineering (BS), Anthropology (MA), and Archaeology (Ph.D.). I am certified by various agencies in: regulatory compliance, disaster recovery, business continuity, information assurance and security. By profession, I have worked in technology for 30 years, specializing in the analysis of complex systems, as well as designing and deploying sophisticated systems and applications for private enterprise, as well as federal, state, and local governments. While involved in technology, I have remained active in archaeology and applied mythography.

Tim McGuinness also publishes the two most popular non-governmental destination websites dedicated for Hurricanes and Tropical Storms!  These were created to document his own experiences surviving 9 hurricanes, including Andrew!

Is The Season Finally Over?  Maybe...

We still have a few weeks left folks!  So keep your fingers crossed!

Hurricane Wilma has now come and gone - from Mexico and Florida at least!  Left's hope that she dies a quiet death at sea!

In her aftermath, we look back while the memories are still fresh in our minds.  We saw her stay put like a broke tourist, as she took everything possible from the Yucatan.  Then beat a bee line for Florida after she'd exhausted Mexico, traveling neatly 25 miles per hour.  She crossed Florida in only a few short hours and then headed north at freeway speed.  However, something very unusual happened on her short visit to Florida.

As Wilma came ashore, the storm proceeded to flood the Florida Keys with at least a foot of water in Key West and elsewhere, but it was South Florida that looks like they took the worst.  Wilma's category three winds did predictable, though tragic damage to the greater Naples area on Florida's southwest coast.  It damaged a still-unknown number of structures, and nearly wiped out the local Caribbean Gardens zoo.  (if you can, please help them rebuild.) 

Wilma then proceeded across the state to strike Broward (Fort Lauderdale) and Miami Dade Counties.  This is where things get strange.  Per the Advisories of the National Hurricane Center, Wilma was a category TWO storm, with a maximum wind speed of 110 miles per hour when it arrived in Southeast Florida.  However, in our evening news, in the news papers, and on numerous websites, we see damage that is as improbable as it is spectacular.

One of the unique characteristics of Southeast Florida is their frequency of hurricanes - they have had over 50 hurricanes during the last one hundred years (visit www.DeadlyStorms.com for details).  As a result of their past experience, and specifically from Hurricane Andrew, building codes are the toughest in the United States relative to wind damage.  In fact, structures (except mobile coffins - I mean homes) are required (per code) to sustain 120+ mile per hour winds without significant damage.  My own home in south-central Miami Dade County, sustained wind speeds of 165mph or more during Hurricane Andrew.  So the question must be asked - what happened in these two counties this time?  How could the damage have been so great with winds barely over 100 mph?  (Even my ex-wife drives that fast in her Camry - can a Toyota sustain higher wind speeds than a building?)

Right now, there are over 6 million people without electricity in Southeastern Florida (more than after Hurricane Andrew, where devastation was near total).  There are numerous high-rise structures that received significant and possibly structural damage.  Countless homes and smaller structures with severe damage.  How can this be?  Did Florida Power & Light and the county governments learn nothing after Andrew?  Are building code violations epidemic?  Or did something else occur? 

Clearly, the damage in Naples and the Keys is deplorable, but it is somewhat consistent with what we understand the storm strength to have been.  But Southeastern Florida does not make sense given only 100 mile per hour wind speed.  So we need to explore what other causes there may be.  Privately, government staff have suggested that Wilma produced far greater gusts than was expected, and an unheard of number of eye wall tornados, with localized wind speeds far in excess of the main force wind speed - possibly as high as the peak winds of Hurricane Andrew.  Fortunately, this does not appear to have been extremely wide spread, but where it occurred, the damage was catastrophic. 

As far as the electric grid is concerned, did Florida Power and Light (FP&L) learn nothing from Hurricane Andrew?  At least half of Miami Dade County was rewired after Andrew destroyed the power grid.  Granted, that the repairs at the time were forced, but 13 years should have allowed for a far more hardened grid than existed even before Andrew.  Yet clearly, the whole grid was damaged to the point that it may be weeks before the majority of these counties have their power fully restored.  How can this be acceptable?  Even in regions of Mississippi, where destruction was nearly total with Katrina, much of the lights are back on. 

One of the lessons that we learned was that the utility company needed to shut down the power grid before the storm arrived, so as to prevent the countless short circuits that blew up so the thousands of transformers that took weeks to replace.  During Hurricane Andrew, FP&L simply left the grid powered and allowed it to self destruct.  It appears they did the same there again.  In this commentator's opinion, FP&L has much to answer for, and hopefully the state regulators will investigate this issue thoroughly.  With a state as populous as Florida, electricity is life itself.  We need our utilities to have a better plan than to just watch it fall apart.  Perhaps the time has come to demand in-ground utilities for the entire state of Florida, not to mention all of our Hurricane and severe weather susceptible states!

Regardless, something more than was expected happened in Southeast Florida as Wilma passed over head.  As the weeks proceed, the National Hurricane Center will analyze their data, and their preliminary report will be released to great anticipation.  Hopefully, as happened with Andrew, perhaps Professor Fujita (father of modern tornado science) will also weigh in on the aspect of eye wall or other tornados in this storm.  However, I also encourage FEMA to formally investigate the damage done to numerous structures to determine why such damage occurred, be it unexpected wind speed or build code violations.  The citizens of Southeast Florida need answers; for their peace of mind, and their future safety!

TMc