1992 Atlantic hurricane season

A below-average year with one exception

The National Hurricane Center's 1992 summary counted six tropical storms, four of which became hurricanes, plus one subtropical storm. That fell short of the 50-year average of 9.8 tropical storms and 5.7 hurricanes the center cited at the time. The site's count of 7 tropical storms includes the April subtropical storm, because the archive counts any storm with one-minute winds of 34 kt or more, whether subtropical or tropical. Three further depressions never reached storm strength. Accumulated cyclone energy came to 76.2 in the site's archive calculation, near normal despite the low storm count.

Wind shear shaped the year. In August the tropical Atlantic had weaker than normal vertical shear, the setting in which Andrew intensified. In September stronger upper-level westerlies east of the Lesser Antilles raised the shear across the main development region at the climatological peak, so new storms formed at higher latitudes, several from disturbances that were not tropical in origin. No storm reached hurricane strength south of 25°N, the second year running that happened.

An April storm, then a long wait

A cut-off low about 1,100 km southeast of Bermuda became a subtropical depression on 21 April and a subtropical storm the next day, when a ship reported 23 m/s winds. The NHC noted that no tropical or subtropical storm had previously been recorded forming in April, though subtropical systems had only been tracked since 1968. Reconnaissance found a slight warm core, which brought the system close to the definition of a tropical cyclone before shear broke it apart on 24 April.

The summer brought only two depressions. The first, in late June, drifted from the southeastern Gulf of Mexico to the Florida coast near Tampa. Up to 33.43 inches of rain fell in Cuba, floods damaged hundreds of homes there, and two people died in Cuba and two in Florida, with Florida damage of $2.6 million in 1992 dollars. A second depression east of Bermuda in late July faded within two days.

Hurricane Andrew's rapid rise

Andrew formed from a tropical wave on 16 August, midway between Africa and the Windward Islands, and nearly fell apart in strong southwesterly shear north of the Caribbean. Around 21 August an upper low near Bermuda split and the shear eased, while a strong ridge off the southeastern United States steered the storm due west. Andrew became the season's first hurricane on 22 August. Between 00 UTC on 21 August and 18 UTC on 23 August its central pressure fell 92 mb to 922 mb, and the archive places its peak one-minute wind of 150 kt at that moment, east of the Bahamas.

The eye crossed northern Eleuthera late on 23 August and the southern Berry Islands early on 24 August. Andrew weakened over the Great Bahama Bank, where its pressure rose to 941 mb, then deepened again over the Straits of Florida. The NHC estimated a pressure of 922 mb at landfall near Homestead at 0905 UTC on 24 August, the third lowest for a United States hurricane landfall that century. Its 1993 summary put the landfall wind at 64 m/s, about 125 kt and Category 4; the current best track raises the landfall wind to 165 mph, Category 5, still below the storm's earlier peak.

Andrew crossed the southern peninsula in about four hours and regained strength over the Gulf of Mexico. A trough turned it north, and it came ashore west of Morgan City, Louisiana, on 26 August with winds of about 115 mph, Category 3, before weakening over land. The archive ends its tropical stage on 28 August.

Andrew's toll in the Bahamas, Florida and Louisiana

Andrew's eye was about 20 km across at landfall, and the worst damage matched the path of its eyewall through southern Dade County, from Kendall through Homestead and Florida City. The NHC reported 25,524 homes destroyed and 101,241 damaged in the county, and the Dade County Grand Jury found that 90 percent of mobile homes in south Dade were destroyed. Evacuation orders covered 517,000 people in Dade County, and about 1.25 million people left parishes in southern Louisiana.

The NHC counted 26 deaths caused directly by Andrew: 3 in the Bahamas, 15 in Florida and 8 in Louisiana, six of those offshore. It listed 36 indirect deaths, many during the recovery, for a toll of 62 as of 7 September 1992, and noted a Miami Herald finding of at least 43 more indirect deaths in Dade County. The report estimated United States damage at $20 billion to $25 billion, plus about $0.25 billion in the Bahamas, in 1992 dollars. A later total gives $27.3 billion in 1992 dollars and 65 deaths across the storm's path, a count that includes indirect deaths as well as the 26 direct ones.

Andrew's seas and winds also toppled 13 oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico and damaged more than a hundred other structures. In Louisiana, 985 homes and 1,951 mobile homes were destroyed, and a tornado at LaPlace, in St. John the Baptist Parish, killed two people hours before the hurricane reached the coast.

A September cluster far from the tropics

After a shear-bound start to September, five systems formed between 17 and 26 September. Hurricane Bonnie grew out of a low left behind by a cold front off the United States coast and became the longest-tracked storm of the year. Hurricane Charley formed south of the Azores. Both peaked at 95 kt and 965 mb in the archive, and both later crossed the Azores as tropical storms. Bonnie brought gusts near 59 mph to Lajes Field on 30 September, and a rockfall linked to the storm killed one person on São Miguel.

Tropical Storm Danielle formed off the southeastern United States, looped offshore and struck the Delmarva Peninsula of Maryland at 2200 UTC on 25 September, only 12 hours after the warning for that stretch of coast. It raised a surge of 1.6 m at Cape Hatteras and eroded beaches from North Carolina to Maryland. The NHC recorded one death, from a sailboat sunk by high seas; other accounts give two drownings in that sinking off New Jersey.

Tropical Storm Earl strengthened over the Gulf Stream north of the Bahamas and turned away from Florida, though it still spawned 11 tornadoes there and dropped 9.38 inches of rain near Canal Point. Hurricane Frances, the last storm, formed from a frontal low in the central Atlantic in late October, peaked at 75 kt and became extratropical on 27 October without striking land.