Key facts
- Formed
- August 25, 2008
- Extratropical
- September 4, 2008
- Dissipated
- September 7, 2008
- Highest winds
- 155 mph (250 km/h)
- Highest gusts
- 210 mph (340 km/h)
- Lowest pressure
- 941 mbar ( hPa ); 27.79 inHg
- Fatalities
- 153 (112 direct, 41 indirect)
- Damage
- $8.31 billion (2008 USD )
- Areas affected
- Lesser Antilles , Greater Antilles , United States Gulf Coast , Oklahoma , Arkansas , Tennessee , Missouri , Illinois , Michigan
via Wikipedia infobox
~35 min read
Encyclopedic overview
Hurricane Gustav (/ˈɡʊstɑːv/) was the second most destructive tropical cyclone of the 2008 Atlantic hurricane season. The seventh tropical cyclone, third hurricane, and second major hurricane of the season, Gustav caused serious damage and casualties in Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Jamaica, the Cayman Islands, Cuba and the United States. Gustav caused at least $8.31 billion (2008 USD) in damages.
It formed on the morning of August 25, 2008, about 260 miles (420 km) southeast of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, and rapidly strengthened into a tropical storm that afternoon and into a hurricane early on August 26. Later that day it made landfall near the Haitian town of Jacmel. It inundated Jamaica and ravaged Western Cuba and then steadily moved across the Gulf of Mexico.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Hurricane Gustav” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.