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On Sept. 13, 2004, as Hurricane Ivan was entering
the Gulf, another tropical depression achieved named
status. The new storm, Jeanne, was then located east
of the Leeward Islands. By the 14th, Jeanne had strengthened
to a tropical storm, and on the 15th it began a slow
progression over first the Virgin Islands, then Puerto
Rico, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti, bringing
torrential rains that killed thousands.
On Sept. 18, after crossing Haiti and losing intensity,
Jeanne turned northward and slowly drifted over the
Bahamas, as though unable to decide what to do next.
For several days, while the storm intensified into
a hurricane, it followed a long, clockwise loop.
The loop ended on the 23rd: Jeanne, now a Category
2, was headed west, directly toward Florida. Still
moving slowly, Jeanne intensified to a Category 3,
and early in the morning of Sept. 26 it made landfall
in Florida at almost exactly the same point as Hurricane
Frances had three weeks earlier.
For storm-weary Floridians, what happened next was
almost more familiar than ordinary life: Jeanne scoured
a path across the state that nearly duplicated that
of Frances, causing extensive flooding, damaging buildings
and roads, knocking out power to millions of people,
and killing six.
Jeanne weakened to tropical storm status while over
Florida; it then turned northward into Georgia and
curved northeast in the mid-Atlantic states. It finally
disappeared for good south of Nova Scotia, bringing
to an end the most trying and destructive hurricane
season in Florida's history.
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