Hurricane Dennis

Post Landfall 1 | Summary
Posting Date: July 11, 2005, 10:00:00 AM

After making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane yesterday afternoon, Dennis has rapidly weakened to a tropical depression. As of 5:00 a.m. EDT, Monday, July 11, the remnants of the storm were centered 40 miles west of Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Sustained wind speeds have fallen to 35 mph and the minimum central pressure has risen to 993 mb. Dennis is moving north-northwest at 14 mph. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) expects Dennis’ forward speed to slow over the next 24 hours as the storm continues to weaken. Rainfall amounts of 3 to 6 inches are still possible from western Tennessee to western Kentucky, southern Illinois, and southern Indiana. Isolated tornadoes are also possible today in northern Alabama, northern Mississippi, and the western Tennessee Valley. In preparation for the storm, more than 1.5 million residents from Florida to New Orleans were ordered to evacuate coastal areas. Following its deadly path through the Caribbean, Dennis came ashore near Pensacola, Florida, with 120 mph winds, leaving hundreds of thousands without power. Gulf Power Company, the main electricity provider for the western Florida panhandle, said some customers could be without power for three weeks or more. Heavy rains accompanied the Category 3 winds, with Peachtree City, Georgia, receiving 6.38 inches of rain in an 18 hour period. Emergency crews, assisted by thousands of National Guard troops, were deployed to clear downed trees, restore power and distribute emergency supplies in the affected areas. The AIR tropical cyclone team has run scenarios using the latest information about the storm’s meteorological parameters and its actual track, which are posted on the Scenarios page of this website. Also included on the Scenarios page is the probability of loss exceedance curve for the industry. Note that the results provided in this posting are for the U.S. only. On the Event Sets page is a set of 5 specific scenarios representing the range of potential losses across the full industry loss distribution; these are available under the “Select” event set. Hurricane Dennis is expected to result in significantly lower insured losses than last year’s Hurricane Ivan, which followed a similar path. This is due to several factors, including Dennis’ faster forward speed, lower wind speeds at landfall (120 mph as compared to Ivan’s 130 mph), much smaller radius of maximum winds and overall footprint, and landfall location, which was on a less populated stretch of the coast. AIR is dispatching a post-disaster survey team to the affected areas early tomorrow.

Post Landfall 1 | Downloads
Posting Date: July 11, 2005, 10:00:00 AM