My memory of distance is apparently faulty. I just checked on a map and
see that, as the crow flies the distance is more like 55 miles between
where I lived and the center of Homestead where the eye passed. I'm not
sure of the diameter of the eye wall but it was fairly small... maybe 30
miles? So I suppose I was likely 30-35 miles from the northern eyewall
but not the center of the eye.
In this Wiki article on Andrew there is an infrared image of Andrew (2nd
down on right) taken at 5 AM
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Andrew> It looks very similar
to a Doppler radar image taken at 5:30 AM that was posted in the
newspaper. Based on the color coding in that image I would have had
winds of about 120 mph at 5:30 AM. Boca Raton where we lived is located
at about the northern extremity of the white area in that image. We
lived on a street named High Pine Trail named for its tall pines. I
remember that time very well because I had cut a little peep hole in my
front door storm shutter and it was then that I could see my neighbor's
pine trees lit by lighting. They were whipping violently back and forth
and I was sure they (and my own which I couldn't see) were going to come
down on the house. My house had been constructed to withstand a
category 3 hurricane and I also had the doors and windows well protected
with commercial and home made storm shutters. Everything survived but
it had never occurred to me until that morning that the trees themselves
were a potential danger. Andrew was the third hurricane I experienced
but the first one was on Long Island, not Florida.
ps: Three months later (the first time I ventured down there) Homestead
looked like a it had been hit by a 50 mile wide tornado. I don't think
the AF base is operating anymore but suspect you must have flown in and
out of there numerous times. It was a hot place to be during the Cuban
missile crisis.
Chuck Norcutt
On 7/1/2012 12:51 PM, Chris Barker wrote:
> I should have thought that 30 miles from the eye of a stiff breeze
> like Andrew would have been pretty well the worst weather, Chuck.
> How big do you reckon the eye was?
>
> Chris
>
> On 1 Jul 2012, at 17:43, Chuck Norcutt wrote:
>
>>
>> That was about the scariest weather event that happened during the
>> 10 years we lived there except for the night long vigil of
>> Hurricane Andrew. That's another event I'll never forget.
>> Fortunately we were about 30 miles north of the eye and I had our
>> house well protected. It received very little damage apart from
>> the screened pool enclosure. Even that wasn't very bad.
>
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