![]() The models were reshuffled and new warnings were issued. Augustine, he turned north and picked up steam as his eye spun together tightly for the third time. Their models ran him out to sea where he would do little more than frighten some cargo ships. The weary forecasters said farewell as he limped into the Atlantic. He then followed Interstate 4 and dumped ten inches of rain on Orlando and eight on Daytona Beach before leaving land as yet another tropical depression. Flooding was heavy, electricity was knocked out, flimsier buildings were flattened, but there were no fatalities. Petersburg with winds at a hundred miles per hour. For a change he maintained a straight course and his eye passed over St. For two days he chugged along with Tampa in his sights, then suddenly came to life again as a Category 1. Three hundred miles south of Mobile, he faked to his left, began a slow turn to the east, and weakened considerably. As a Category 4, and veering east and west along a steady northbound trek, Leo seemed destined for a historic and ugly landfall.Īnd then he stalled again. Fleets of boats and airplanes scrambled to reposition inland. ![]() Evacuation plans in five states were activated. Oil companies scurried to extract ten thousand rig workers from the Gulf, and, as always, jacked up their prices just for the hell of it. Warnings were posted from Galveston to Pensacola. Dozens of giddy camera crews raced into harm’s way. Once again he rapidly grew in size and speed, and in less than two days had his own news special on cable, and Vegas was posting odds on the landing site. Leo seemed to have a mind of his own and no use for their models. His trackers drew a line straight at Biloxi, the usual target, but by then they knew better than to make predictions. He turned south in time to flood Jamaica and the Caymans, then, in a startling twelve-hour period, he reorganized with a perfect eye and turned north toward the warm and inviting waters of the Gulf of Mexico. His eye weakened as he lost steam and limped across Cuba, once again as a lowly depression with plenty of rain but unimpressive winds. He skirted low beneath Crooked Island, took a slight left, and aimed for Cuba before stalling south of Andros. At Category 3, with winds of 120 miles per hour, he hit the Turks and Caicos head-on and blew away several hundred homes, killing ten. When he finally petered out from exhaustion over the Midwest, he was blamed for five billion in property damages and thirty-five deaths.īut before that he wasted no time with his classifications, advancing swiftly from tropical depression to tropical storm to a full-blown hurricane. All three would eventually follow their expected routes and bring heavy rains to the islands but nothing more.įrom the beginning, though, it was apparent that Leo would go where no one predicted. When Leo began his journey, there were three named storms ahead of him, all in a menacing row that threatened the Caribbean. Within hours he had been upgraded to a tropical storm.įor a month, strong dry winds had swept across the Sahara and collided with the moist fronts along the equator, creating swirling masses that moved westward as if searching for land. He was soon spotted from space, properly named, and classified as a mere tropical depression. Leo spun to life in late July in the restless waters of the far eastern Atlantic, about two hundred miles west of Cape Verde. ![]() ![]() Read the first chapter here to tide you over until the book is released on April 28th! John Grisham is taking us back to Camino Island with his newest, Camino Winds!
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