Word: storme
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Belying its mild-sounding name, Gilbert became unique as a force -- the most powerful storm to hit the western hemisphere in this century. Its counterclockwise wind speed peaked at an estimated 200 m.p.h. at 10,000 ft. and 175 m.p.h. at ground level; its 26.13-in. barometric pressure was the lowest ever recorded. Gilbert was blamed for at least 100 deaths and billions of dollars in damage in the Caribbean and Mexico. An additional 200 people . were feared drowned after a rain-swollen river jumped its banks and overturned four buses Saturday in Monterrey, Mexico. But highly accurate tracking...
Gilbert blew Mike and George off the front pages, as its record dimensions and ominous approach dominated news reports. Overnight, specialists like Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, became trusted gurus, interpreting the big blow with computers. Somehow the storm seemed the violent culmination of a season in which Mother Nature has done anything but nurture, producing the hottest American summer in 50 years, a drought that parched the Midwest, forest fires that turned U.S. parks into cinders, floods that submerged large parts of Bangladesh and Sudan...
Elsewhere in the Gulf, the storm shut down hundreds of offshore oil platforms, forced 5,000 workers to evacuate and halted the daily flow of 1.7 million barrels of oil. Partly as a result, the price of oil jumped 75 cents a bbl. on world markets before declining 33 cents at week...
...entire Gulf Coast of Texas had been put on alert as Gilbert headed toward landfall. From Brownsville to Biloxi, Miss., people sought shelter from the storm, in many places clogging highways and emptying supermarket shelves. Houston, 50 miles inland, shuddered at the prospect of its glimmering skyscrapers swaying in the gale-force winds. About a quarter of the 60,000 residents of Galveston Island headed for higher ground, leaving boarded-up windows and fortified houses. In Brownsville, a dirt-poor border town of 110,000, those who could afford to fled inland. But since half the residents are below...
...residents who refused to leave acted as though they had called Gilbert's bluff. A Coast Guard helicopter rescued the crews of three fishing boats foundering in the Gulf of Mexico. "We're just full of happy endings today," said Petty Officer Bob Morehead, "which is great with a storm like this...