NHC Releases Hurricane Dorian Report

The National Hurricane Center (NHC) released its detailed report on Hurricane Dorian on Monday, confirming that the hurricane was the strongest on record to ever hit the northwestern Bahamas. The highlights from the report: The storm killed caused more than 200 people in the Bahamas, led to three billion dollars' worth of damage in the Bahamas alone, and Dorian left nearly 30,000 people homeless. At landfall, Dorian's peak winds were 185 mph as it made landfall on Elbow Cay on Abaco Island, located in the northeastern Bahamas. Its central pressure was 910 millibars, though according to the report, an individual measured a 909-millibar pressure reading on his smartphone near the center of the storm (the reading, though, couldn't be verified by the NHC). "Dorian caused catastrophic damage mainly in Abaco and eastern Grand Bahama Islands, with total damage estimated at $3.4 billion," the NHC report said. "The Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), an agency which the government of the Bahamas asked to conduct a study following Dorian’s trail of destruction, stated that the hurricane left 29,500 people homeless and/or jobless. The island of Abaco was hardest hit, suffering 87 percent of the damage. More than 75 percent of all homes on the island were damaged." Most of the wind and pressure estimates from the storm remained the same from the time of the storm, but much of the death and damage figures were new. In the United States, the NHC report confirmed that there were no direct fatalities from the storm. But, an estimated $1.6 billion worth of damage was incurred, mostly in the Carolinas and Florida. Twenty-one tornadoes touched down from the storm as well, the NHC confirmed. Two of those 21 were EF-2 tornadoes, the strongest tornadoes from Dorian. The bulk of the storm stayed offshore from the United States, but at one point, the center of a much-weakened Dorian passed near Cape Fear and Cape Hatteras, North Carolina (shown below).  The NHC releases detailed reports on hurricanes usually a few months after they take place, reviewing everything from forecast accuracy, exact track and wind speeds, damage estimates to casualty totals. For more of a look-back on Hurricane Dorian, Meteorologist Joe Astolfi has more on the storm's devastating wrath below. https://youtu.be/oKr8G83xXQg Stay with WeatherNation for the very latest through hurricane season.