Hurricane Dean

Hurricane Dean

Dean at peak intensity making landfall on August 21
Meteorological history
Formed	August 13, 2007
Remnant low	August 23, 2007
Dissipated	August 27, 2007
Category 5 major hurricane
1-minute sustained (SSHWS/NWS)
Highest winds	175 mph (280 km/h)
Lowest pressure	905 mbar (hPa); 26.72 inHg
Overall effects
Fatalities	45
Damage	$1.66 billion (2007 USD)
Areas affected	Lesser Antilles, Greater Antilles, Nicaragua, Honduras, Belize, Guatemala, Mexico, Gulf Coast of the United States, Southwestern United States
IBTrACS
Part of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season
Part of a series on Hurricane Dean
History Meteorological history Impact Lesser Antilles Greater Antilles Mexico Other wikis Commons: Dean images Wikinews: Dean stories

Hurricane Dean was the strongest tropical cyclone of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. It was the most intense North Atlantic hurricane since Hurricane Wilma of 2005, tying for eighth overall. Additionally, it made the fourth most intense Atlantic hurricane landfall. A Cape Verde hurricane that formed on August 13, 2007, Dean took a west-northwest path from the eastern Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lucia Channel and into the Caribbean. It strengthened into a major hurricane,^{[nb 1]} reaching Category 5 status on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale before passing just south of Jamaica on August 20. The storm made landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula on August 21 at peak intensity. It crossed the peninsula and emerged into the Bay of Campeche weakened, but still remained a hurricane. It strengthened briefly before making a second landfall near Tecolutla in the Mexican state of Veracruz on August 22. Dean drifted to the northwest, weakening into a remnant low which dissipated uneventfully over the southwestern United States. Dean was the second-most intense tropical cyclone worldwide of 2007 in terms of pressure, only behind Cyclone George in the Australian region, and tied with Felix as the most intense worldwide in terms of 1-minute sustained winds.

The hurricane's intense winds, waves, rains and storm surge were responsible for at least 45 deaths across ten countries and caused estimated damages of US$1.66 billion. First impacting the islands of the Lesser Antilles, Dean's path through the Caribbean devastated agricultural crops, particularly those of Martinique and Jamaica. Upon reaching Mexico, Hurricane Dean was a Category 5 storm, but it missed major population centers and its exceptional Category 5 strength landfall caused no deaths and less damage than in the Caribbean islands it passed as a Category 2 storm.

Through the affected regions, clean up and repair took months to complete. Donations solicited by international aid organizations joined national funds in clearing roads, rebuilding houses, and replanting destroyed crops. In Jamaica, where the damage was worst, banana production did not return to pre-storm levels for over a year. Mexico's tourist industry, too, took almost a year to rebuild its damaged cruise ship infrastructure.

Dean was the first hurricane to make landfall in the Atlantic basin at Category 5 intensity since Hurricane Andrew on August 24, 1992.^[1] Dean's Category 5 landfall was in a sparsely populated area and thus far less damaging than Andrew's, even though Dean was much larger, but its long swath of damage resulted in its name retirement from the World Meteorological Organization's Atlantic hurricane naming lists.

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