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Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier
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With the recent formations of Hurricane Gustav and Tropical Storm Fay in the Caribbean, many people are probably thinking that South Florida is not a great place to be during hurricane season. To the contrary, South Florida (counties ofDade, Broward, and Palm Beach) actually gets hit by very few major hurricanes.
First let us look at the statistics. From 1926 when the Category 4 Miami Hurricane hit and destroyed the Florida land boom (humorously portrayed in the Marx Brothers film, "The Cocoanuts") until over twenty years later when the 1947 Fort Lauderdale Hurricane landed, there were no major hurricanes in South Florida. That's a full generation with no large hurricanes. Fourteen years after the Fort Lauderdale Hurricane, Hurricane Cleo landed near Miami but that was the last major hurricane in the area until 28 years later when Hurricane Andrew roared into Homestead in 1992 as a Category 5. A person could have been born, raised, and had children in South Florida in the time gap between those latter two hurricanes.
After Hurricane Andrew, no major hurricane made landfall in South Florida for 13 years until the infamous Katrina in 2005. However, both Katrina and Andrew were unusual in that these hurricanes formed as tropical depressions in the eastern Bahamas area. Most hurricanes form off the African coast in the area of the Cape Verde islands and track east through the Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico before making landfall in either Mexico or the United States. And because of this, South Florida is usually protected from any direct hits due to the Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier.
The Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier is formed by the islands of Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Cuba, and, to a lesser extent, Jamaica. There are mountain chains on all of these islands that act as geological barriers to the hurricanes of the Caribbean. They either keep the hurricanes well to the south until they track so far west as to cause little danger to South Florida or, if they do cross the barrier, they are so weakened as to either dissipate completely or go from hurricane to tropical storm status.
The recent Tropical Storm Fay is a good example of the effect of the Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier upon Caribbean storms. As you can see on the tracking map, Fay was unable to develop into a hurricane in large part because it crossed from east to west through the islands ofPuerto Rico and Hispaniola. The mountains on Puerto Rico reach to over 4000 feet and on Hispaniola the highest point is Pico Duarte which reaches just over 10,000 feet (it sometimes even snows there) which work to greatly weaken any storms that cross, including Fay. Only when Fay moved east of the Sierra Maestra and Escambray mountain ranges in Cuba was it able to cross that island but by then it was too far west to for a direct hit on South Florida. When Tropical Storm Fay did hit Florida, it was on the opposite coast from South Florida.
The most recent hurricane to form in the Caribbean, Gustav, also illustrates the effect of the Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier. Gustav went from tropical storm status to hurricane before hitting the mountains of Haiti's southwest peninsula, which quickly weakened it back to a tropical storm. Once out over the water again, Gustav returned to becoming a hurricane until it hit the mountains of Jamaica, causing it to weaken once again to tropical storm. However, now that Gustav has moved west of Jamaica it is once again a hurricane moving west towards on a track projected to hit the Gulf coast of the United States. This is a frequent scenario for such Caribbean hurricanes since, although Gustav now threatens Louisiana and Texas, it is already too far to the west to have any chance of hitting South Florida. Another illustration of how the Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier works like a natural slot to keep the Caribbean hurricanes well to the south of Florida until they pass into the Gulf of Mexico. If you check hurricane tracking maps over the years, you will see this is a recurring pattern.
Of course, South Florida residents should never completely rely on the Greater Antilles Hurricane Barrier to protect them. As this is being written, Tropical Storm Hanna looms dangerously in the Bahamas, well north of the Greater Antilles which normally affords protection to the area.
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