Hurricane Jeanne 10th anniversary: Storm caused floods, death and destruction

John Nelander reviews the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Jeanne, the storm which followed Hurricane Francis two weeks to the minute later back in 2004. Click title for link to the Shiny Sheet article.

Thursday is the 10th anniversary of the Florida landfall of Hurricane Jeanne, which lashed the peninsula’s East Coast just 20 days after Hurricane Frances in September, 2004.

It was part two of a double-whammy that was followed up by Hurricane Wilma 13 months later and triggered another round of soaring homeowners insurance rates. It was a storm that will be remembered for its meteorological oddities as much as for the damage and deaths it caused.

[Later...]

For several days after raking Haiti, it appeared that Jeanne would not be a problem for Florida, or for the U.S. It meandered north of Hispaniola, regaining tropical storm strength, and then headed north to a point more than 500 miles northeast of the Bahamas.

But then, due to a complex weather pattern to Jeanne’s north — including conditions caused by the remnants of Hurricane Ivan — Jeanne began a loop to the northeast, east, south and then west as it regained hurricane strength. It moved over its own previous track on Sept. 24, according to the NHC. Because the storm had churned up cooler water on its track north, the storm weakened slightly but then began gathering strength again as it continued west toward the Bahamas and Florida.