PENSACOLA, Fla., July 10 -- Hurricane Dennis, a tightly wound storm with a ferocious core, spiraled onto the Florida Panhandle on Sunday afternoon, shredding signs and toppling trees in coastal communities still recovering from an onslaught of three tropical storms in the past month and a monster hurricane less than a year ago.
Dennis, which had slackened slightly to a Category 3 hurricane with 120-mph winds, burst ashore just east of Pensacola at 3:25 p.m. Eastern time on Santa Rosa Island, a gangly 50-mile, barrier-island beach retreat where the legendary Apache warrior Geronimo was once imprisoned.
Aluminum sheets flew off roofs, violently cartwheeling down abandoned streets, and the seas lifted to frightening heights under wind gusts that shrieked into an afternoon sky so dark that it almost looked like night. Power lines sagged, leaving many homes and businesses, and even entire towns, without light. Gulf Power, the Panhandle's largest electric company, presaged the misery to come by warning 400,000 customers that they could be without electricity for three weeks or more. About 280,000 homes and businesses in Alabama were believed to be without power.
No deaths were reported in the storm's wake. The Associated Press reported that Dennis caused an estimated $1 billion to $2.5 billion in insured damage in the United States, according to AIR worldwide Corp. of Boston, an insurance-risk modeling company.
The last-minute weakening of a storm that earlier in the day had carried 145 mph winds was a relief to many in the region. But Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R) and National Hurricane Center Director Max Mayfield compared the drop-off to "the difference between getting hit by a semi-truck or a freight train."
Dennis was compared with Ivan, another Category 3 hurricane that hit just up the coast in September in Gulf Shores, Ala. Ivan killed 52 people in the United States while causing $10 billion in insured damage.
But Dennis established its own identity. It arrived remarkably early, stirring the sand between Pensacola Beach and Navarre Beach as the first major hurricane to hit the United States in July in 150 years of recorded history and only the seventh Category 3 or stronger hurricane to form in that period. It also moved quicker than Ivan, smashing the coastline with a fast, concentrated jab from its more compact core, then moving on.
"This one was very, very intense all at once," said restaurateur Nick Zangari, whose penchant for serving meatball sandwiches at New York Nick's right up to the moment of hurricane impact has made him a celebrity in Pensacola. "You had things flying by like 'The Wizard of Oz' movie."
By 11 p.m. Eastern time, Dennis had been downgraded to a tropical storm with 50-mph winds, and was 25 miles southeast of Demopolis, Ala. Forecasters said it was a tornado and flooding threat but should weaken to a tropical depression by Monday. The National Hurricane Center said it would meander through Alabama, Tennessee and southern Illinois before curling into Ohio and dissipating at the end of the week.
When evening approached, National Guard convoys rolled into the Panhandle as Dennis moved inland, dropping heavy rain on lower Alabama.
Power outages were reported throughout the region, but again Dennis seemed to inflict less woe than Ivan.
"It doesn't appear that this storm has created as much widespread destruction as Ivan did, at least from a power-outage standpoint," said John Hutchinson, spokesman for Gulf Power Co. "After Ivan, we did not have one light bulb burning in Santa Rosa or Escambia counties, and right now we have power in both of those places."
Dennis Blows In and Out of Fla. and Al.