Ferocious winds and stinging sheets of rain pummeled storm-weary Florida early yesterday as Hurricane Jeanne slammed ashore in an area already battered by Frances earlier this month.
Jeanne officially made landfall just before midnight at Hutchinson Island, 64km north of West Palm Beach and just 1.6km from where the core of Frances crossed the coast exactly three weeks ago, the National Hurricane Center said.
PHOTO: EPA
Early indications suggested that faster, fiercer Jeanne was dealing a harsher blow to the Florida coast than did Frances.
A deceptive calm fell over some areas as the eye of the storm moved inland over Martin and St Lucie counties while communities just kilometers away were whipped by sideways driving rain and 160kph wind gusts.
Eerie green flashes lit up the night sky at intervals as transformers blew out, cutting electricity for yet more residents of the storm-weary state.
Officials said about 700,000 people were already without power and in many cases it could take weeks before it is restored.
Jeanne, the fourth hurricane to pound the southeastern US state in six weeks, tore roofs off houses, felled trees, sent debris flying and knocked down power lines, which in some cases had just been repaired after the passage of the last ferocious storm.
Frantic callers telephoned radio stations and emergency services to say their houses were coming apart, while hundreds of thousands of people in southern Florida yet again lost power, leaving them to sweat out the storm in steamy heat.
A local government official in Fort Pierce called Jeanne "a far worse storm than Hurricane Frances."
Forecasters warned of tornadoes and said the swirling northern edge of the eye of the storm was pushing 1.2m to 2.1m of ocean water onto land as torrential rain poured yet more water onto already saturated ground.
Late Saturday night, the powerful eyewall of the storm moved onshore just north of Palm Beach, packing winds of 193kph, with higher gusts.
The US National Hurricane Center (NHC) called Jeanne a "dangerous category three hurricane" and warned its winds could reach as far as 160km inland.
Three million people had been told to evacuate before the storm bore down on southern Florida, where emergency crews have been struggling to repair the damage wrought by the earlier, deadly hurricanes.
Jeanne is the same storm that last week devastated northern Haiti, leaving some 1,300 people confirmed dead and hundreds more missing and feared dead.
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