The eye crossed over the state in the next five hours and did not lose much strength. There it brought winds of 120 mph (195 km/hr). A day and a half later Wilma made landfall on Cape Romano, FL. It moved northeastward across the Gulf of Mexico, regaining much of its strength, and monitored by NOAA 42. 23rd.įortunately for the residents and tourists trapped by the storm, Wilma began to move under the influence of an approaching front on Oct. NOAA 42 carried out another mission, penetrating the eye of Wilma even as it was overland. The hurricane spent the next day with its center meandering over the northeast tip of the Yucatan Peninsula, pounding the area with high winds and heavy rains. It had only diminished slightly from its peak, and hit Cozumel with maximum sustained winds of 150 mph (240 km/hr). The storm was moving at nearly a crawl by the time it finally struck the Mexican island of Cozumel on the evening of Oct. NOAA 42 carried out a reconnaissance mission late on the 20th, after this peak. Wilma maintained Cat-5 status for about a day as it tracked slowly to the northwest. The Air Force measured a new record low pressure for an Atlantic hurricane of 882 mb at Wilma’s peak. As the storm intensified, its eye shrank down to an incredibly small 2.3 miles (3.7 km) in diameter. By the 19th, Wilma finally began to move westward and rapidly intensified, reaching Category Five status by late afternoon. In addition to the Air Force reconnaissance flights, NOAA 49 conducted a series of Synoptic Surveillance missions to help with forecasting Wilma’s future path. The 24th tropical depression of that year formed near the Caymans and spent the next four days in the same vicinity as it slowly organized into Tropical Storm Wilma. The 2005 hurricane season was already one of the most active on record by the time Wilma formed on Oct. The storm had set records and then ravaged the Yucatan Peninsula prior to this final landfall, but it still had plenty of power left to inflict great damage on southern Florida. In the early morning hours of October 24, 2005, Hurricane Wilma came ashore on Florida’s Gulf coast.
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