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Hurricane Charley 20 years later: Remembering the devastating storm

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Published  August 13, 2024 7:28am EDT
Hurricanes
FOX 13 News

From 2004: Man records Hurricane Charley's fury

FOX 13's Doug Smith catches up with a Lake Wales resident who recorded some of the destruction from Hurricane Charley as it happened. Originally aired August 14, 2004.

TAMPA, Fla. - It's been 20 years since Hurricane Charley made landfall in the Sunshine State, wreaking havoc as it tore through Florida and jumpstarting a devastating hurricane season.

On August 13, 2004, Charley made landfall near the island of Cayo Costa in Florida as a Category 4 hurricane before ripping through the Florida Peninsula, leaving 15 people dead in its wake and billions of dollars in property damage.

Hurricane Charley's path through Cuba and Florida

READ: Tampa Bay's rare hurricane landfalls: 1921 storm, 'Great Gale of 1848'

The morning of the 13th, the center of the forecasted cone lay smack-dab in the Tampa Bay region, but it took a slight veer to the right over Fort Myers, similar to what happened with Hurricane Ian over 18 years later. 

Hurricane Charley forecast map, August 13, 2004 (Courtesy: NOAA)

In the Tampa Bay area, Polk County and Lake Wales, specifically, felt the devastation of Charley.

The Polk County city, which would normally be thought to be safe from storms sitting in the middle of the state, saw Charley and two other storms that season rip through.

Photo courtesy: NWS

Fifteen Polk County residents died from Charley, Jeanne, and Frances, and property damage exceeded $1.2 billion.  

"It was like a bomb went off," said Paul Womble, director of Polk County Emergency Management, several years ago. "Hurricane Charley was like a 10-mile-wide tornado as it went through our county and blew things down, blew things away."

The National Weather Service said all of this was just a ‘harbinger of things to come,' as three other hurricanes tore through Florida over the course of the next two months that year. 

Remembering Hurricane Charley...and Frances, and Jeanne

Lake Wales and surrounding areas in eastern Polk County were hit by three powerful storms in 2004, one right after the other that year.

Hurricanes Frances, Ivan, and Jeanne would strike the Sunshine State all over a six-week span in an unprecedented convergence of severe tropical activity. 

Satellite and radar images of the four hurricanes that hit Florida in 2004 (Courtesy: NOAA)

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