Reliving Hurricane Charley
Original Blog Entry For Charley's 9th Anniversary: August 12, 2013.
Links updated, satellite map & video added for 15th anniversary in 2019.
I wasn't yet blogging for AccuWeather.com in 2004 (that would happen a year later ahead of Hurricane Katrina), but in researching Hurricane Charley (which made landfall nine years ago today), I came across some interesting resources, that I want to copy here for posterity.
In summer 2004, I was ensconced in my biggest AccuWeather.com project: the RadarPlus service. I was able to put the RadarPlus system through the paces by configuring it to display information about the storm, and saved off these images and movies:
AccuWeather.com Vice President Mike Steinberg was in the area on business travel and took these photos of the damage from outside the Days Inn Suites in Kissimmee on Saturday, Aug. 14, 2004. Charley had hit the evening before, knocking down part of a wall of the hotel and causing extensive damage. We have other personal stories in this news article.
I've also created a slideshow of all AccuWeather's colorful, high-resolution (for the time) forecast and news report graphics for the storm, on my WeatherMatrix Facebook Page:
You're also going to want to click to these rarely-seen GIF animations of Hurricane Charley -- the first is a series of 3-D slices through the storm:
You can read NWS-Melbourne's official report on their website [PDF], NWS-Tampa's report on their site, and the National Hurricane Center report on theirs. [PDF]
This satellite image is from August 13, 2004, and NASA has more satellite images of Hurricane Charley on their website.
AccuWeather's Bernie Rayno has some thoughts for the 10th anniversary in this video:
Aug 15, 2014; 6:50 PM ET Hurricane Charley caused widespread devastation when it smashed into Florida and the Carolinas in 2004. Hear three stories of surviving the storm, and what has been learned about forecasting hurricanes since then.
