By Maya Bell,The Orlando Sentinel

MIAMI – When a weakened but still mighty Hurricane Dennis slammed into the Panhandle’s Santa Rosa Island on Sunday, it joined an elite corps – becoming one of only four major hurricanes to make landfall in the United States in July.

In fact, since 1900, only one other major hurricane had an earlier July arrival than Dennis, an unnamed storm that struck Louisiana on July 5, 1916. And, as luck would have it, one of the other major July storms struck in the Florida Panhandle, just east of where Dennis came ashore in 1936.

Major storms, those classified as category 3 or above with winds of 111 mph or more, are rare enough events, making up only 21 percent of all land-falling hurricanes in the United States. But those coming so early in the six-month hurricane seasons are even rarer. In Dennis’ case, however, Caribbean and Gulf waters are warmer than usual and other conditions were almost perfect, nearly producing the first category 4 hurricane ever to hit the Panhandle.

Fortunately, though, Dennis’ winds, which climbed to 135 mph Saturday afternoon, plummeted just before landfall, taking it down a notch to category 3 strength.

But just how big of a difference that made to shell-shocked Panhandle residents is relative. As Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center noted, the difference between a category 3 and a category 4 storm is “like the difference between getting run over by an 18-wheeler and a freight train.”

And, surely, Pensacola-area residents must be feeling like they got hit by both after being the target of two major hurricanes within nine months. That, too, is a rarity.

During last year’s unprecedented hurricane season, which brought four hurricanes to Florida shores, Hurricanes Frances and Jeanne made landfall within just three weeks and less than five miles of each other last year in Southeast Florida. But only Jeanne was a major storm.

“Two major hurricanes in the same area in nine months is pretty remarkable,” Mayfield said. “I can’t remember two major hurricanes this close.”

Even before making landfall, Dennis was one for the record books. With Tropical Storms Arlene, Bret and Cindy before it, Dennis rounded out the quartet of the four earliest named storms on record. It’s also the earliest major storm to strike Cuba.

Cuba, which took a prolonged and deadly beating by Dennis last week, also played an unwittingly role in Dennis’ surprising revival, according to Dave Nolan, a meteorologist at the Univeristy of Miami who specializes in hurricane intensity.

Early Saturday, forecasters were heartened that Dennis had weakened to a category 1, bearing winds of just 90 mph, after emerging from Cuba. They hoped Dennis would not have enough circulation, or time, to recover significantly before crossing the Gulf coast.

But it did, and Nolan credits Dennis’ small eye, which was just nine miles across at landfall. The smaller the core of a hurricane, the faster it can reorganize after being disrupted by, say, a landmass like Cuba.

And, according to Nolan, the eye wall stayed taunt because it never went through an eye-wall replacement cycle typical when hurricanes rapidly intensity as Dennis did, reaching a category 4 with winds of 150 mph before striking Cuba.

The reason? That happens over water and when Dennis was ready to undergo its eye-wall replacement, it hit the impoverished island.

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(c) 2005, The Orlando Sentinel (Fla.).

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Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services.

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PHOTOS (from KRT Photo Service, 202-383-6099): Hurricane Dennis

GRAPHICS (from KRT Graphics, 202-383-6064): Hurricane Dennis

AP-NY-07-10-05 2022EDT

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