it should be an interesting day....
tbo.com >>
The storm is expected to thunder past the Tampa Bay area late this afternoon on a dash through the Gulf as a Category 3 hurricane - the likes of which hasn't crossed the southwest Florida coastline in 44 years.
...
Forecasters still aren't certain where Charley will pick to move ashore.
``It could be anywhere from Fort Myers to Cedar Key,'' Cobb said.
For residents of the Tampa Bay area, location is everything.
...
If the storm remains off the coast as it passes the mouth of Tampa Bay, that water could be shoved into the Bay, piling against the shore and possibly putting downtown Tampa and other areas near the northern end of the Bay under 14 feet of water.
Scary Scenarios
Forecasters expect the core of Charley to have 120 mph winds just before landfall. The storm's forward speed could add 15 mph more on the side of the storm hitting the coast, Cobb said, putting the worst of the winds at more than 130 mph.
Those winds around the eye could be a 60-mile ring of devastation where Charley runs ashore, Colson said.
In that ring, most mobile homes would be destroyed or heavily damaged. Poorly built houses could have roofs ripped off and walls collapse. Even well-built houses could lose shingles, gutters and siding.
Industrial park buildings, particularly those with light- weight steel coverings, might lose part of their roofs, and so might older, low-rise apartment buildings.
High-rise buildings in that danger zone could lose most of their glass.
Weak trees likely would topple and nearly all large branches would break.
Beyond the worst winds, most everyone in the region is likely to see winds between 39 and 75 mph that extend 125 miles from the storm's center.
If the Tampa Bay area gets any break from Charley, it will be the storm's quick trip past at about 15 mph. Moving so quickly, the storm will have no chance to dump huge amounts of rain.
Still, rainfall could be 4 to 8 inches, enough to cause problems for rivers that saw flooding last week.
Rare Occurrence
The last time a Category 3 storm, considered a major hurricane, hit the United States was Hurricane Bret in 1999, Cobb said.
It's an even more rare occurrence for the Florida west coast.
The last storm of Charley's strength to hit Naples was Hurricane Donna in 1960. Sarasota last felt one that powerful in 1944 before storms had names.
Tampa hasn't been blasted by one like Charley since 1921.
During a hurricane drill conducted three years ago in Hillsborough County, that storm's impact was re-created under modern conditions with attention-getting results.
If that storm hit today, it would cause more than $4 billion in damage and leave the ground floors of most downtown Tampa buildings awash under 10 feet of water.
About 30 percent of the county's buildings or mobile homes would escape without damage. Most of the mobile homes would be destroyed.
It would leave behind 10 million cubic yards of debris, enough to fill 384,000 neighborhood garbage trucks.
Charley is expected to follow a slightly different track but also is slightly stronger than the 105 mph 1921 storm.