Hurricane Dean in the Caribbean
21-Aug-07
To date, Hurricane Dean in the Caribbean has inflicted hurricane force winds on the Lesser Antilles islands of St. Lucia and Martinique. Dean caused intense hurricane winds on the island of Jamaica, focusing on Kingston and Montego Bay. It tracked about 100 miles south of Grand Cayman island, inflicting marginal hurricane / tropical storm winds on Grand Cayman. Dean made landfall on the Yucatan Peninsula (Mexico) very close to the Belize border as a CAT 5 storm (906 mb). The winds and resulting losses in Jamaica are expected to be much greater than the losses in Jamaica in 2004 (Hurricane Ivan) which caused much lower winds in Kingston
The superlatives for Hurricane Dean include having the 9th lowest recorded barometric pressure reading (906 mb) in basin history, and the 3rd lowest landfalling barometric pressure.
The Yucatan peninsula in the area near landfall is sparsely populated and expected damages are not influencing EQECAT to increase its cumulative event loss to date beyond the range of $1.5 billion to $3.0 billion. Hurricane Dean is expected to complete its traverse of the Yucatan Peninsula today and traverse across Campeche Bay before making landfall north of Veracruz, Mexico. The storm is expected to grow to hurricane strength during its traverse across Campeche Bay, but the winds are not expected to be sufficient to induce significant damage to the Mexican offshore energy assets there.
Hurricane Dean - August 21, 2007
Source: National Hurricane Center (NHC)
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