Before 2004, Hurricane Andrew was the modern-day hurricane everyone talked about in Florida.
Then came Charley.
It was nine years ago Tuesday, on Aug. 13, 2004, that Hurricane Charley tore a path of destruction across Central Florida, taking much of the area by surprise.
Charley first formed as a tropical depression four days earlier, near Barbados. The depression strengthened to a tropical storm early the next day in the eastern Caribbean, and became a hurricane on Aug. 11 near Jamaica.
Charley's center passed about 40 miles southwest of Jamaica, and then about 15 miles northeast of Grand Cayman. It then make landfall in western Cuba as a Category 3 hurricane with 120 mph winds. The passage over western Cuba weakened Charley, but not by much.
Then, early on the morning of the 13th, the center reached the Dry Tortugas, west of Key West, and the hurricane began to rapidly strengthen and move faster toward the north-northeast.
An unseasonably strong, upper-level trough that had dropped from the east-central United States into the eastern Gulf of Mexico began to turn the hurricane toward the southwest coast of Florida. Charley made landfall just north of Captiva with maximum winds near 150 mph, very close to Category 5 strength.
The fast-moving hurricane then crossed Polk County in the evening, passing near Kissimmee and Orlando before midnight. Charley was still a hurricane when it exited near Daytona Beach into the Atlantic.
Charley was a very small hurricane, with its maximum winds only about 6 to 7 miles from the center. Because of the fast movement, the storm surge did not exceed 7 feet.
However, the hurricane's violent winds devastated Punta Gorda and neighboring Port Charlotte. Eight people were killed in Florida, and almost 800 people were injured. Property damage was a staggering $5 billion.
Charley taught us not to pay too much attention to the center line in the famous hurricane cone. The media was sure of a strike in Tampa Bay, but the Punta Gorda and Port Charlotte area was within the cone and under a Hurricane Warning for over 24 hours before the hurricane hit.
Yet many there said they were surprised Charley had turned quickly enough to hit Southwest Florida and miss Tampa Bay almost entirely.
Charley also proved that even an inland city like Orlando and rural areas such as eastern Polk County can be vulnerable to severe hurricane wind damage.