Caption:Hurricane Andrew 25.8.92
Hurricanes and typhoons (as Pacific hurricanes are called, from the Chinese tifun ) are intensely violent storms with sustained winds of at least 120 km/h. Most hurricanes originate in the doldrums, the air currents lodged between the northern and southern trade routes.
Hurricanes consist of high speed winds blowing circularity around a low pressure center, known as the eye of the storm. The low pressure center develops when the warm, saturated air is underrun and forced upward by denser, cooler air. From the edge of the storm toward its center, the atmospheric pressure drops sharply and the wind speed rises.
Hurricanes generally move in a path that is measured on a parabola graph.
Caption:Hurricane Andrew 25.8.92
Since 1943 US military aircraft have been flying into the eyes of hurricanes to measure wind speeds, directions, pressure and the structure of the hurricane.
A Coordinated system of tracking hurricanes accuratly was devised in the late 1950's. Over the years, many improvments have been made including radar, sonar and satillite detection. These improvments have cut the number of deaths but proptery damage remains high. Hurricane Andrew caused an estimated $12 billion in damage with 50 left dead and thousands left homeless.
Early on 25.8.92, with sustained winds of 140 m.p.h., Andrew was tracking across the gulf and a hurricane warning had been issued from Mobile, Ala., to Port Arthur, Texas. The hurricane was expected to reach shore again by later that day or the next, but Andrew had befuddled forecasters almost from the start.
Dade County was under a dusk to dawn curfew after reports of scattered looting. President Bush arrived to tour several damaged neighborhoods and authorized federal disaster assistance. The hardest hit was the city of Homestead, 20 miles south of Miami, where the hurricane swept in at 3 a.m. with roaring winds and a 12-foot tidal surge. Destruction reigned until barely anything was left upright. By dawn, Homestead looked as though someone had turned a blender on it - and forgotten the lid. The town of 32,000 was shredded and tossed about. Telephone poles were snapped in two. Roofs were peeled away, exposing wet, pinkish plywood joints and beams. Balconies were unhinged. Fences were ripped down.Residents had been told to evacuate, but only about 65 percent heeded the order. The city did what it could to save stragglers. But as the night wore on, windows blew out in police cruisers and phone lines went down, and nearly every effort to help was hampered.
When the eye of the hurricane hit at around 4 a.m., a strange calm descended. It lasted only 35 minutes, but authorities were able to survey damage for the first time. And they found residents whose homes had been blown apart. People asked to be taken to shelters. But because they were in an evacuation area, there were no shelters to be had. So police wound up taking some to the city jail's holding cells. Only when Andrew pushed westward and the sun rose in Homestead could people see what destruction had been done. At the Four Seasons and DeSoto trailer parks, home mostly to retirees, mobile homes split in two, spilling the contents of their owners' lives like seeds: a rocking chair there, a ball of yarn, a rolling pin. Dazed residents picked through the debris. Some could not even identify the lots where their homes once stood.If the damage was worst in Homestead, confusion prevailed all across Dade County, and some parts of neighboring Broward, when the hurricane subsided. It was a land where, in one night, chaos had been visibly flung into people's lives. Andrew messed with homes and work schedules and senses of security. It shut down the places where people liked to shop and plundered their gardens and added new bills to family budgets. In the Miami-area neighborhoods of Kendall and Coral Gables, electrical wires hung limp and loose from power poles, their frayed edges flapping toward passing cars. Traffic lights were broken, dangling in intersections or mangled about the roadside. All day, people ventured out of their evening shelter to look over the hurricane's toll in daylight. They negotiated streets with no signals and steered around towering piles of tree limbs. Every store and restaurant was closed, many still boarded with plywood hurriedly nailed on windows to brace for the storm. Power was out in many places. So was water. All normalcy was gone. People drifted down streets and neighborhoods tried to absorb their shock.
Before hitting Florida, Andrew raked the outer islands of the Bahamas, killing at least three people. The hardest hit was the resort island of Eleuthera, about 225 miles east of Miami. In the capital, Nassau, damage was limited to downed trees and power lines. Power was largely restored by the next day, but communication with the outer islands remained cut.
Hurricane Andrew was the most costly Hurricane in American history with an estimated $12 billion in damage. The Air Force base at Homestead was never rebuilt 
Caption:Hurricane Andrew 24.8.92; 05h00