Hurricane Nate (2017)

Hurricane Nate

Category 1 hurricane (SSHWS/NWS)
Hurricane Nate at peak intensity racing towards Louisiana on October 7
Formed	October 4, 2017
Dissipated	October 11, 2017
(Extratropical after October 9)
Highest winds	1-minute sustained: 90 mph (150 km/h)
Lowest pressure	981 mbar (hPa); 28.97 inHg
Fatalities	45 confirmed (as of October 11)
Damage	> $2.69 billion (2017 USD)
Areas affected	Central America, Cayman Islands, Cuba, Yucatán Peninsula, Gulf Coast of the United States (Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Tennessee), East Coast of the United States, Atlantic Canada
Part of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season

Hurricane Nate was an unusually fast-moving tropical cyclone that caused widespread destruction and casualties in Central America and the central U.S. Gulf Coast during early October 2017. The fourteenth named storm and ninth hurricane of the 2017 Atlantic hurricane season, Nate originated from a broad area of low pressure over the southwestern Caribbean on October 3. The disturbance moved northwest, organizing into a tropical depression the next day and attaining tropical storm intensity early on October 5. The storm moved ashore the coastline of Nicaragua thereafter. Little change in strength occurred as the system continued into Honduras, and Nate began steady intensification over the warm waters of the northwestern Caribbean Sea shortly thereafter. It attained hurricane intensity while moving through the Yucatán Channel early on October 7, attaining peak winds of 90 mph (150 km/h) in the central Gulf of Mexico later that day. Early the next day, Nate made landfall near the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana then 2nd U.S. landfall near Biloxi, MS at 12:30 a.m. CST on Oct 8, 2017, causing storm surge to flood the ground floor of coastal casinos and buildings, plus rip currents, hurricane-force winds, and beach erosion.

Moving northwestward at 28 mph (44 km/h), Nate was the fastest moving storm ever recorded in the Gulf of Mexico. It is also the fourth Atlantic hurricane of 2017 to make landfall in the United States or one of its territories; such a quartet of landfalls has not occurred since 2005. In addition, Nate was the first tropical cyclone to move ashore in the state of Mississippi since Hurricane Katrina.