Hurricane Frances

Pre-Landfall 6 | Summary
Posting Date: September 3, 2004, 6:00:00 PM

Hurricane Frances weakened since our 8:00 a.m. EDT posting and is now a strong Category 2 hurricane on the Saffir Simpson scale. Maximum sustained winds are currently 105 mph with higher gusts. As of 8:00 p.m. EDT, the center of Hurricane Frances is located about 90 miles east-southeast of Freeport, Grand Bahama Island and about 200 miles from the Florida coast. Frances has slowed to just 4 mph and its west-northwest motion is expected to continue during the next 24 hours. Steering currents have weakened, however, so some “wobbling” of the track is likely. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) currently expects Frances to make landfall along the Florida coast sometime tomorrow afternoon or evening. Frances will likely then make its way slowly across Florida, subjecting exposed properties to prolonged winds. Frances remains a large system, more than twice the size of Hurricane Charley. Hurricane force winds currently extend outward to 85 miles from the storm’s center, and tropical storm force winds extend up to near 185 miles. Parts of Florida are already experiencing 40 mph gusts. Florida has ordered mandatory evacuations in parts of sixteen counties and voluntary evacuations in five others. Forecasts of intensity are still uncertain, according to the NHC. A key factor will be what happens to the system as it moves over the Gulf Stream. There remains some chance that Frances will reintensify as it does so. Bahamas Over the past two days, Hurricane Frances wove its way through the Bahamas, skirting San Salvador to the south with wind speeds of close to 145 mph and then just north of Cat Island with winds of 125 mph. While both islands felt the brunt of the storm, both are sparsely populated. By the time Frances had crossed Eleuthera, winds had dropped to 115 mph. The eye of Hurricane Frances passed some 50 miles north of the capital Nassau on New Providence, which accounts for close to 60% of Bahamas exposures, thus sparing the island from the most damaging winds. As of this posting, Frances is headed for Grand Bahama and the country’s second commercial center, Freeport, with sustained winds of near 105 mph. The AIR tropical cyclone modeling team currently estimates that insured losses in the Bahamas will not exceed $300 million. U.S. AIR has run new scenarios for the U.S. representing a variety of assumptions about the storm’s future track and intensity. Five of these are now posted on the scenarios page of this website, where CATRADER® and CLASIC/2™ clients can view wind speed and loss maps. In addition, probability-weighted event sets representing the full range of simulated scenarios are now available for download. Note that the loss estimates provided in these event sets are for the U.S. only. The AIR tropical cyclone modeling team continues to monitor Hurricane Frances closely. Please remember that there is considerable uncertainty surrounding the future track and intensity of this storm. As Frances nears the Florida coast, that uncertainty will diminish, as will our range of estimates. AIR will post new information on this storm tomorrow.

Pre-Landfall 6 | Downloads
Posting Date: September 3, 2004, 6:00:00 PM