What if Hurricane Andrew hit South Florida today?
“In any event, if a hurricane hits a major metropolitan area, that’s a national disaster. You’ll need a huge infusion of state and federal money to help,” he said. Lanza said his biggest fear is a storm similar to Hurricane Floyd could hit Miami-Dade. Whereas Andrew was compact, had relatively little rain and was fast moving, Floyd, which hit North Carolina with 115 mph winds in 1999, was huge, slow and wet. “The water would remain high possibly for weeks,” he said. “That’s bad.” Turbulent sequence Officials of the National Hurricane Center and its research arm would prefer not to speculate on the specific potential destruction another Andrew would leave behind. One problem is they say they cannot be certain of the storm’s wind field structure. However, Mark Powell, a research scientist under the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, has drafted his own estimate of Andrew’s wind profile and said Eqecat’s wind field “roughly” corresponds. Powell, considered a leading authorit
