DU hurricane buffs, riddle me this (1990s storm question) ..

[DemoTex]

Back in the 1990s (IIRC) there was a hurricane or tropical storm that moved back and forth in the Gulf of Mexico right along the Florida panhandle. I thought it was Opal, but all the track maps for Opal show it making a direct hit at about Pensacola. I've been through all the tracks for the last 25 years or so and I can't find anything resembling what I think I remember. Maybe I dreamed it.

:crazy:

[DesertFlower]

1. there was a powerful storm called

andrew.

[DemoTex]

4. Wasn't Andrew

[jobycom]

2. Elena, maybe? 1985.

It did some funkie stuff in the panhandle, then hit Mississippi.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=post&forum=389&topic_id=3838587&mesg_id=3838587

[2KS2KHonda]

3. Only one that comes to mind from your description was Elena but that was in the 80s

it hung around offshore near Tampa and looped around a couple of times over 3 days...
:shrug:
edit with link....I lost a bunch of shingles to that one
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Elena

[Sancho]

5. My first thought was Elena...

but there may have been some others.

[DemoTex]

6. Bingo .. Elena. Thanks yoose guys!

[magellan]

7. Elena 1985?

I went through the hurricane history at skeetobiteweather looking for a TS or hurricane track like you describe and this seemed to be the best match.

edit: woops, too late! Glad you got your answer.

[spin]

8. I lived in Tampa during Elena...

I got cabin fever staying inside waiting for the storm to hit, (fortunately it never did). We got the occasional feeder band with a few high gusts of wind. but nothing really serious. I decided to stay in Tampa rather than evacuate. I did get a little nervous when the people who had grown up in Florida pulled out and headed inland. I was lucky it didn't clobber Tampa.

Currently I'm getting cabin fever again as Fay slowly crawls north Florida where I now live. Going to be a rainy day and night.

In the West Coast area of Florida alone, some 300,000 residents were ordered to leave. The storm literally held coastal residents along the Gulf Coast hostage. Although the storm did not get any closer than 80 miles of Tampa, the storm did bring 40 to 50 mph winds, a six to seven foot storm surge, and destruction to about 250 homes while damaging many thousands more. Total damage was estimated to be approximately $213 million dollars. Meanwhile, next door in Alabama, winds were clocked as high as 132 miles per hour on Dauphin Island as the eye of the hurricane passed to within 30 miles of Mobile.

*****snip****

After meandering in the Gulf of Mexico for almost a week, Elena finally made up its mind, and headed toward the Mississippi Gulf Coast. Such places as Biloxi, Gulfport, and Pass Christian, which felt the fury of storms such as Hurricane Camille, one of three Category Five Hurricanes to make landfall in the United States, were now in the crosshairs. Elena, with winds as high as 125 mph, finally came ashore in Biloxi on September 2nd, 1985.
http://www.hurricaneville.com/elena.html

[trof]

9. Might have been Georges, 1998.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Georges#Storm_history
It squatted right over Mobile Bay for a couple of days and just pissed all over us.

[DemoTex]

11. In the words of Don Knotts as the nervous man on the Steve Allen Show (remember?)

Noop!

(But thanks for the info, trof!)

:hi:

[csziggy]

10. 1985 Hurricane Elena hung around in the bend of Florida for ages

We were building a barn and it was just miserable. That same year TS Juan was also in the Gulf and Hurricane Kate hit Tallahassee the week before Thanksgiving. Half the roof was on the barn but we had no damage from Kate. A neighbor down the road had his pole barn pulled out of the ground and carried about 100 feet but his horse and his boat that were in the barn for protection were not damaged. The horse was kind of spooked, though. ;)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1985_Atlantic_hurricane_season

1995 was pretty active in the Gulf - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:1995_Atlantic_hurricane_season_map.png

But Wikipedia has good coverage of various hurricane seasons: List of Atlantic hurricane seasons - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Atlantic_hurricane_seasons