Hurricane Dennis Strengthens, Aims for Gulf Coast

Willie Drye
for National Geographic News

July 8, 2005

Still eyeing the damage caused by two recent tropical storms and last
year's Hurricane Ivan, residents of the United States' Gulf Coast are
bracing for another pounding, this time from powerful Hurricane Dennis.

Dennis has already become one of the most powerful July hurricanes on record, lashing Cuba today with 150-mile-an hour (240-kilometer-an-hour) winds. The hurricane is expected to make landfall in the U.S. on Sunday.

Emergency-management and local-government officials from Florida to Louisiana are meeting today to decide whether to order evacuations for coastal residents. Mandatory evacuation orders have already been issued for the lower Florida Keys, which includes Key West.

The eye of Hurricane Dennis is expected to pass about 80 miles (130 kilometers) west of Key West in the Gulf of Mexico early Saturday morning.

Officials in other Gulf Coast states are expected to make statements about coastal evacuations this afternoon. Dave Murzin, a member of the Florida Legislature from Pensacola, said this morning that he expects a mandatory evacuation order to be issued for barrier islands off the Florida Panhandle.

"I am sure there will be an evacuation order this afternoon," Murzin said.

Officials in Louisiana were less certain about evacuations there.

"It's too early to tell for mandatory evacuations here," said Paul Trotter, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Slidell, Louisiana, about 40 miles (65 kilometers) northeast of New Orleans.

Landfall This Weekend

This afternoon the hurricane struck Cuba with winds of at least 150 miles (240 kilometers) an hour. This makes it a strong Category Four storm on the Saffir-Simpson scale, which ranks hurricanes from one to five according to wind speeds and destructive potential.

Once the storm crosses Cuba, forecasters think Hurricane Dennis is likely to follow a track very similar to that of Hurricane Ivan. Ivan came ashore September 16 near Mobile Bay, Alabama. With winds approaching 130 miles (210 kilometers) an hour, the 2004 storm made landfall as a Category Three hurricane and caused heavy damage in nearby Pensacola, Florida.

"Those memories are still fresh in the minds of many, many people in this area," said Randy McKee, a National Weather Service meteorologist in Mobile, Alabama. "We're telling people this will be very similar to Ivan and to expect the same sort of weather and water conditions with Dennis."

The front-right quadrant of Hurricane Dennis contains the storm's strongest winds. It is expected to push a storm surge of 15 to 20 feet (5 or 6 meters) of water ashore when it makes landfall, said Steve Rinard, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service office in Lake Charles, Louisiana. If Dennis does make landfall near Mobile Bay, the coast west of there will see less dramatic effects, Rinard said.

Not So Calm Before the Storm

Gulf Coast residents have been gathering supplies and making other preparations since Thursday. The departure of Tropical Storm Cindy Thursday allowed them to get out of their homes to buy groceries, water, plywood, and gasoline.

"There are long lines at the Wal-Mart and at gas stations," said Murzin, the Florida legislator. "I drove around town and saw pickup trucks loaded with 5-gallon [19-liter] tanks of gasoline."

Although Dennis is not expected to do significant structural damage in the Florida Keys, the hurricane has already landed a punishing financial blow. The mandatory evacuation order for the lower Keys has cut off the flow of tourist dollars.

"The hotels are totally empty, and there are no tourists here," said Jeffrey Pinkus, mayor of Marathon, which is about 50 miles (80 kilometers) from Key West. "Even if the hurricane does no structural damage, economically it's a total disaster for the Keys."

Dennis also is emptying cash registers elsewhere. A.J. Holloway, mayor of Biloxi, Mississippi, said the storm is chasing visitors out of his city at the peak of the tourist season. A four-day convention that had been booked for Biloxi beginning Sunday also has been cancelled, Holloway said.

Worst Is Yet to Come?

Forecasters have predicted that the 2005 hurricane season will continue a decadelong cycle of active seasons. (See "'Active' Hurricane Season Predicted for U.S.") Four named storms have already formed. Hurricane Dennis began as a tropical depression in the eastern Caribbean Sea on July 5.

Phil Klotzbach, a meteorology research associate at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, said the formation of an intense hurricane in that part of the Caribbean in July is an unusual event.

This is the only known hurricane season to have had four storms form so early in the season, which runs from June 1 to November 30. Powerful July hurricanes formed in 1909 and 1926, but both storms lost much of their intensity before making landfall in Texas and Florida, respectively.

Meteorologist Stu Ostro of the Weather Channel said the 2005 season is shaping up to be an unusual one. The formation of Hurricane Dennis, however, isn't necessarily an indicator of what the rest of the season will be like.

"What happens early in the season doesn't necessarily mean a thing for later on," Ostro said. "In 1997, for example, things got off to an early start with a bunch of storms in June and July, including a U.S. hurricane landfall. But then there were very few storms the remainder of the season, and none hit land, either in the U.S. or Caribbean."

Ostro attributes the diminished activity in 1997 to the presence of El Niño, an occasional weather phenomenon that alters atmospheric conditions in the Pacific Ocean. The presence of El Niño typically reduces hurricane activity.

Ostro expects 2005 to be a busy season, because there's no El Niño effect.

"All signs point to a continued active season," Ostro said.

Willie Drye is the author of Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, published by National Geographic Books.

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