Submitting Campus
Prescott
Student Status
Undergraduate
Class Project
Prescott: Undergraduate Student Works
Archival Class Information
College of Aviation
Advisor Name
Mark Sinclair
Abstract/Description
Hurricane Andrew was a historic Category 5 storm that made landfall in southern Florida on the morning of 24 August 1992. Andrew’s landfall brought massive destruction, with entire neighborhoods in the city of Homestead, Florida destroyed. There were 250,000 people left homeless in the US over its entire track, and cost US$25 billion in damage, the costliest hurricane in United States history up to that point. A synoptic analysis was completed to study the tropical and subsequent extratropical phases of this destructive storm. During Andrew’s tropical phase it was found that strong vertical shear initially impeded development. As this dissipated, Andrew rapidly intensified due to a presence of warm SST’s, a strong influx of heat and moisture fluxes to enhance the WISHE mechanism, and a small Rossby radius of deformation which encouraged rotation. During Andrew’s extratropical transition, it was observed that Andrew interacted with a cold front pushing southeastward through the same location, causing a transition from a symmetric tropical cyclone with a warm core structure to an asymmetric extratropical cyclone before fully dissipating.
Document Type
Undergraduate Research
Scholarly Commons Citation
Schipper, A. E., & Sinclair, M. R. (2026). A Synoptic Analysis of Hurricane Andrew. Retrieved from https://commons.erau.edu/student-works/226
