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Last Year’s Hurricane Michael just upgraded to Cat 5

FILE – In this Oct. 11, 2018 file photo, a boat sits amidst debris in the aftermath of Hurricane Michael in Mexico Beach, Fla. Weather forecasters have posthumously upgraded last fall’s Hurricane Michael from a Category 4 storm to a Category 5. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration announced the storm’s upgraded status Friday, making Michael only the fourth storm on record to have hit the U.S. as a Category 5 hurricane. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert, File)

By Joe Callahan 
 

When the storm made landfall at Mexico Beach on Oct. 10 of last year, its winds were 160 mph, the National Hurricane Center has determined.

Hurricane Michael has been upgraded to a Category 5, the most intense on the five-tier scale, at the point it made landfall last year near Panama City, according to the National Hurricane Center.

National Hurricane Center spokesman Dennis Feltgen said in an email Friday that “scientists at NOAA’s National Hurricane Center conducted a detailed post-storm analysis on all the data available for Hurricane Michael and have determined that the storm’s estimated intensity at landfall was 140 knots (160 mph).”

This final wind intensity is a 5 mph increase over the original estimate and “makes Michael a category 5 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale at the time of landfall (on the Florida Panhandle) on Oct. 10 near Mexico Beach and Tyndall Air Force Base.”

The storm claimed 72 lives, including 57 in the United States.

The means Michael became only the fourth Category 5 hurricane to ever make landfall in the United States. The others are the “The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935,” Camille in 1969 and Andrew in 1992.

Joe Callahan can be reached at 867-4113 or at joe.callahan@starbanner.com. Follow him on twitter @JoeOcalaNews.