Hours after Hurricane Nicole began its assault on Florida’s eastern edge, meteorologists marveled at the parallels between storms in Florida’s 2022 and 2004 hurricane seasons. In particular, the paths of two pairs of hurricanes — Nicole and Jeanne, and Ian and Charley — showed undeniable and eerie similarities. Separated by 18 years, both pairs hit in almost the same place and followed nearly identical paths. In both instances, the storms’ landfalls were 43 days apart.
At 3 a.m. Thursday, Nicole made landfall just south of Vero Beach, Fla., as a Category 1 hurricane. Eighteen years earlier and less than 15 miles away, Hurricane Jeanne made landfall at the southern end of Hutchinson Island the night of Sept. 25.
Jeanne lashed the island as a Category 3 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph before weakening to a tropical storm over central Florida, according to the National Weather Service. Along a boomerang-shaped path, Jeanne then turned sharply toward central Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia.
Nicole was likewise downgraded to a tropical storm over Florida’s interior and is also projected to streak north into central Georgia, following a path just a hint to the west of Jeanne’s. The tracks of Ian and Charley are also nearly identical.
Forty-three days ago, Ian made landfall near Cayo Costa, devastating southwestern Florida as a high-end Category 4 storm. It was Florida’s first hurricane of this season. Charley, Florida’s first hurricane of the 2004 hurricane season, also made landfall near Cayo Costa as a high-end Category 4 storm.
In another uncanny similarity, the National Hurricane Center had initially predicted both Charley and Ian would make landfall near Tampa Bay, but both storms made a late shift and struck closer to Fort Myers. Then, both Ian and Charley traveled northeast across the Sunshine State. (SOURCE)
