Category 5: 'What If' the Big One Hit Lake City?

EDITOR'S NOTE: The following story is based on the possible scenario of a Category 5 hurricane sweeping through North Central Florida. To help illustrate the importance of preparedness, this story uses tracks of previous storms and quotes from local and national tropical weather experts to comment on this fictitious, while possible, hurricane.

While much of the Suwannee River Valley sleeps on Sept. 4, Hurricane Emily is born several hundred miles off the Cape Verde Islands. Not yet named, the tropical wave moves directly west at 29 mph. Even with the memory of the hurricanes of 2004, the community's mind is on other things.
But within less than two weeks, the monster soon frightens coastline populations from South Florida to Texas as a Category 5 hurricane.
Formation of hurricanes like Emily begin when the air is warmed by contact with ocean waves and moistened by evaporation. As the air warms, it rises, spiraling inward toward the system's center. The closer it gets to the center, the faster the motion. Three conditions determine how a potential hurricane like Emily will strengthen: warm surface waters, high humidity and the ability to concentrate heat.
As the wave continues its forward movement across warm waters, it develops the counter-clockwise, cyclonic circulation typical of North Atlantic tropical storms. A day later, the wind speed reaches 40 mph, and the hurricane center upgrades it to a tropical storm named Emily. By the time Emily hits the Dominican Republic on Sept. 8, she has become the year's third hurricane with winds of 76 mph.

Emily wreaks havoc

Even as a Category1 hurricane, Emily leaves havoc in the Dominican Republic, killing 12 people and leaving thousands homeless. She loses some punch, dropping temporarily to tropical storm force, and is somewhat disorganized as she skirts the southern tip of Cuba near Guantanamo Bay.
But by Sept. 10, Emily meanders in the warm waters of the Caribbean Sea, where she will regain much of her power back over the next couple of days.
Emily appears headed directly for the Yucatan Peninsula, but on the following day, Columbia County residents, along with the rest of Florida, receives an unwelcome surprise. Forecasts show Emily taking a definite turn northward into the Gulf of Mexico. The danger of a direct hit on the northwest Florida coast is a definite possibility.

Small eyes have it

The most intense hurricanes rotate around relatively small eyes, less than 10 miles in diameter. The center is relatively calm and is the area with the lowest pressure. But immediately around this calm center is the hurricane's most violent area - the eye wall. Moist air rushes toward the eye, spiraling upward to create the eye wall. Once atop the eye, the air cools and descends back into the storm.
By now, Emily's hurricane force winds cover thousands of square miles, and her tropical storm force winds cover areas 10 times larger. Along the contours of the spiral rain bands are dense clouds where torrential rains fall. Lightning glows in these rain bands, and turbulence whips the cloudy terrain.
Emily all but misses the Yucatan Peninsula and is already close to hurricane status again one day later. By Sept. 11, exactly one week after she was detected by the hurricane center. Emily is packing 109 mph winds and is making a curve toward the northwest.
Two days later, the hurricane is up to 127 mph, and there are hurricane warnings along the Florida, Alabama and Mississippi coasts. Emily is still two days away, but the hurricane center is reporting the probable strike zone stretches from the Tampa area to New Orleans.

Steaming ashore

On Sept. 12, there are many unoccupied businesses and offices in Lake City as people scurry to grocery stores to stock up on supplies since Emily, now a Category 3 hurricane, is only a day away and appears headed directly to Cedar Key, much like the 1986 hurricane did when it devastated the entire region.

Take shelter

Columbia County Emergency Management and American Red Cross have begun establishing shelters and advising residents to begin making preparations. Emily continues to strengthen over the next couple of days, reaching Category 4 status in the early morning hours of Sept. 14 with 132 mph winds, and more strengthening is expected. Just before Emily blows ashore shortly after midnight on Sept. 15, weather reconnaissance shows wind strength has reached 158 mph. That wind strength is expected to remain at landfall, making Emily the nation's first Category 5 storm at landfall since Andrew in 1992.
Emily is moving fast and still packing 132 mph winds when the eye reaches Columbia County with gusts as high as 175. How seriously residents took the hurricane's threat will determine how the community fares when the storm passes.
Fortunately, Hurricane Emily was only make-believe. When the next threat becomes real, the only question that matters is: Will Columbia County be ready?

Dora, September 1964 A Time when Another Hurricane Burned Itself into Columbia County's Memory

June, too soon. July, stand by. August, look out, you must. September, remember. October, all over. (Mariner's weather poem)

Trees bent in unnatural angles. Lakes filled into Columbia County homes and streets. All local talk was on how weather had turned its ugly face on the area.
All this happened Sept. 5 when the county faced the worst hurricane disaster in its recorded history as Hurricane Frances delivered more than 15 inches of rain with the Category 4 storm's destructive winds. It also happened almost exactly 40 years earlier when Hurricane Dora swept across the state from the First Coast Sept. 9-10, 1964.
But unlike this year's storm, high winds forecast for the county didn't materialize from Hurricane Dora. But the area still had to cope with a rainfall comparable to Frances - an average of 14 inches.
"Live Oak was literally under water downtown," said Harvey Campbell, whose family had just moved to Lake City in 1964. "It's ironic almost exactly 40 years later to the day, we would have this Hurricane Frances just about do the same thing to us."
In 1964, water overflowed Lake DeSoto. Three miles of Lake City's roads were damaged so badly, they had to be rebuilt. Furniture floated inside flooded homes along the Santa Fe and Suwannee Rivers. And in Live Oak, which was deluged with more than 18 inches of rain in two days, people checked their mail in canoes.
"I've never seen the like of that much water in all my life," said Beatrice Sullivan, who lived in Bradford County in 1964. "That was one hurricane I'll never forget."
September has historically been a dangerous month for hurricanes in Florida. This September has already delivered Frances and Ivan, which hit Grenada, Jamaica and the Cayman Islands at Category 5 strength before aiming toward the Panhandle.
More than 60 percent of the major hurricanes that struck the state happened in September. There were Hurricanes Donna, Betsy and Eloise in 1960, 1965 and 1975. The worst was the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 in the Keys, one of only three Category 5 hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland in the 20th century.
But a hurricane making a direct hit on northeast Florida was a rarity, at least in recent memory. Before 1964, Jacksonville had not faced a landfalling hurricane since 1871. In fact, a hurricane had not struck north of Stuart since the Hurricane of 1880.
After hanging on the northeast Florida coast most of the day on Sept. 9, Dora's eye struck at an almost 90-degree angle at St. Augustine about midnight Sept. 10 with 125-mph winds and a 10-foot storm tide at Fernandina Beach and Jacksonville.
About 1,000 people, many from Jacksonville, stayed in three Lake City shelters. By the time Dora left Lake City, it had caused about $100,000 in damages to city streets and sewers, then-Mayor J.R. Tison told the Lake City Reporter.
Seventh Street was practically undermined from one end to the other. Poplar Street was completely washed out, 10 feet deep in some places.
The storm greatly damaged corn and pecan crops. The Lake City drive-in theater lost its screen. Loyd Shaw Furniture lost 80 percent of its stock to water damage. On the positive side, all electricity was restored by Sunday.
Live Oak's downtown business district and a residential area on the town's north side were flooded - to rooftops in some places - when the city's drainage system of dry wells failed to function in the heavy rainfall, according to The Jasper News' archives.
North Florida received $3 million in federal funds to rebuild.
Dale Williams, now county manager, was 6 when Dora came through the area. He especially remembers the damage in Live Oak.
"What I remember most was all the water after Dora," Williams said. "My dad was the food inspector with the state and he had to drive around the county to see all the damage.
"You couldn't get to Live Oak in a car. You had to stop right on 90. You just don't forget that much water."
A day after the hurricane, The Beatles and President Lyndon B. Johnson visited Jacksonville.
Winnie Richardson, now the Columbia County senior services activity director, remembers hearing advisories about the storm, but wasn't particularly concerned.
"I just remember late that night it started raining and it kept raining," she said. "We got a lot of rain. But I was never really afraid. Even with (Hurricane) Charley, I was concerned, but never really frightened."
In 1964, Sam Markham taught junior high school math during the day and closed his father's restaurant, Magnolia Barbecue (better known as The Mag), at night and was also working on his master's degree in school administration at the University of Florida.
That night, he helped prepare the building for hurricane conditions and closed The Mag at dusk.
"There was enough wind to blow signs down and I remember thinking, 'If it keeps going, the sign on top of The Mag will be gone.' But we didn't lose the sign."
Lake Lona overflowed on to U.S. 90 into low-lying areas within a couple of miles. The rainfall was especially heavy in White Springs near the Suwannee River.
"Going toward the Hopeful (Baptist) Church, I saw water 1 mile wide," Markham said. "I've lived in Columbia County all my life and have seen the Suwannee River peak and flood. That was the highest water level in Lake City I can remember," he said before Hurricane Frances repeated history earlier this September.