Between August 31 and September 1, 2004, Hurricane Frances
roared over the Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti,
as shown in thistrue-color MODIS images. In the top image, from
September 1, Frances was located approximately 230 km (140 miles)
north-northeast of San Juan, Puerto Rico, about parallel with
the western end of the small island. Frances was moving towards
the west near 26 km/hr (16 mph) with maximum sustained winds near
225 km/hr (140 mph). In the mouse-over image, from the day before,
Frances was parallel with the eastern end of San Juan, about 230
km (140 miles) offshore to the north.
Over the next couple of days, Frances swung around the end
of southern Florida to approach the state from the west. It came
ashore near Stuart as a Category Two storm with 105 mph winds,
then slowly blew through the "panhandle." Frances' winds
dropped from hurricane to tropical storm force, though as of the
morning of September 6, 2004, the winds were still at 65 miles
per hour. In addition to the extensive damages done by the hurricane's
winds, the storm dropped up to 13 inches of rain on the state.
Damages to the state, which is still recovering from Hurricane
Charley from just three weeks prior, are estimated in the billions
of dollars.