Why Hurricane Irma Spared Miami: Weather Channel's Norcross

MIAMI BEACH, FL — When Bryan Norcross wasn't sharing 30 years of insights into hurricanes with a national television audience on Sunday, The Weather Channel veteran was firing off text messages to his many friends around the Miami area. Unlike some of the other nasty storms he's covered, Hurricane Irma was locked in on Norcross' Miami Beach Sunset Harbour neighborhood and all of South Florida. He wanted to tell his friends back home that they were going to be just fine.

"I check on everybody," Norcross conceded in an interview with Patch after a whirlwind Sunday that began with an appearance on parent network NBC and wrapped up late at night when he signed off from The Weather Channel's Atlanta studios. (For more hurricane news or local news from Florida, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Miami Patch, and click here to find your local Florida Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

"When I get a little break from broadcasting, I send off texts if there's some development or something," said Norcross, author of the newly released book, "My Hurricane Andrew Story," which chronicles his recollections of the only Category 5 storm to strike a major U.S. metropolitan area. "Today, most of what I was doing when I was contacting people was saying, 'This is about as bad as it is going to be.' I wanted people to know that just because the power was out in Dade and Broward."

Also See: Hurricane Irma Weakens To A Tropical Storm, But It's Still Dangerous

Miami was already taking punches from Irma ahead of the storm's 9:10 a.m. landfall in the United States. In weather parlance, landfall refers to the point at which the center of circulation — also known as the eye of the hurricane — touches land. That happened in Cudjoe Key. The storm carried sustained winds of 130 miles per hour when it crossed onto U.S. soil. (For more hurricane news or local news from Florida, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Miami Patch, and click here to find your local Florida Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

In the Miami area there was a report of a crane striking a downtown building, electrical wires that ignited a fire at a one-story home in Boca Raton, wind damage to the Miami Heat's training facility and water damage to Miami International Airport. Meanwhile, Miami-area roads flooded, and as many as seven out of every 10 Florida Power & Light customers lost power.

Irma brought hurricane-force gusts throughout Miami-Dade, Broward and Palm Beach Counties, including sustained winds near the Miami-area coast of 100 miles per hour.

Fortunately, Miami never took Irma's full wrath. The part of the storm that hit the Miami area was a strong feeder band that was rotating around the center of the storm. It has also been described as a spiral band.

"A spiral band that happened to rotate directly over Dade, Broward and Palm Beach County was responsible for the weather, but it was 100 miles from where the center came ashore," Norcross explained. "So it moved north, and the hurricane moved north.

"The winds peaked in Miami around noon time, but the center of circulation was more than 100 miles away. The center of the circulation went directly from the lower keys — from Cudjoe Key — directly to Marco Island. They're both on the west end of the Keys and the west part of Florida, but this outer strong spiral band on the east side made the weather in Southwest Florida into a physically big hurricane."

Twenty-five years ago, Norcross remained on the air for all but one hour short of a full day at the local NBC affiliate in Miami and helped countless South Floridians make sense of the unimaginable devastation caused by Hurricane Andrew. During that storm, electricity stayed out for three months in the hardest hit areas.

In the days leading up to Irma's arrival, Norcross feared that the 400-mile-wide storm might be worse than Andrew, which destroyed 63,000 homes and left at least 175,000 homeless.

"The storm made a kind of a lean to the right," he said of Irma. "It stalled near Cuba, and that changed the timing. It got more dry air mixed in it, which is a negative factor for it."

Irma will probably be compared to Hurricane Wilma rather than Andrew. But this weekend's storm still proved terrifying to South Floridians, many of whom had not experienced a hurricane before.

"When the power comes back on and the roads are open, a lot of things return to normal, but there are things that are going to have to be fixed," he said. "There's a lot of flooding and wind damage and cranes toppled and signs down over streets. There was just a lot going on."

Photo courtesy Miami Beach Police Department