Hurricane Wilma (2005) in Sebastian, Florida

Hurricane Wilma gave Sebastian a few hours of hurricane-force north wind at Sebastian Inlet on October 24, 2005, plus a tornado on the barrier island and minor tree and power line damage across Indian River County (NWS Melbourne).

Wilma never came close to a Sebastian landfall. It crossed the peninsula from the Gulf side, entering near Everglades City in the early morning and reaching the Atlantic near Palm Beach County by late morning, roughly 60 miles south of Sebastian. What made it matter here was its size. The National Hurricane Center warned at 11 a.m. that Wilma was a large hurricane whose strongest eyewall winds extended well away from the center (NHC advisory 37), and Sebastian sat inside the hurricane warning the whole time.

The best local measurement came from a research sensor, not an airport. At the seaward end of the Sebastian Inlet north jetty, a Florida Institute of Technology station logged 74 knots sustained and a 90 knot gust, about 85 and 104 mph, as Wilma's back side swept the coast. By the standard of Frances and Jeanne the year before, the result in Sebastian was light, and the city's own manager later described Wilma that way (Vero News).

Yes, Sebastian was under a hurricane warning from October 23, 2005, when the National Hurricane Center replaced the watch north of Jupiter Inlet to Titusville with a warning, until Wilma moved out to sea (NHC advisory 32).

The upgrade came at 4 a.m. CDT on Sunday, October 23, while Wilma was still in the Gulf of Mexico, and it put the whole Indian River County shoreline, Sebastian Inlet included, inside the warned coast (NHC advisory 32). By 11 p.m. that night the hurricane warning on the Florida east coast ran from Titusville southward, including Lake Okeechobee (NHC advisory 35).

The track that followed explains why Sebastian got wind but not the eye. At 7 a.m. EDT on Monday, October 24, Wilma's center was just inland, about 10 miles north of Everglades City, moving northeast near 23 mph (NHC advisory 36A). Four hours later the center was about 15 miles north-northeast of West Palm Beach with 105 mph winds, a Category 2, moving northeast near 25 mph (NHC advisory 37). From there the eye headed out over the Atlantic, so Sebastian stayed on the storm's northwest side, the side where the wind blows from the north.

Wilma's strongest measured winds near Sebastian were 74 knots sustained and 90 knots in gusts at the seaward end of the Sebastian Inlet north jetty around 12:30 p.m. EDT on October 24, 2005 (NWS Melbourne).

The jetty instrument belonged to the Florida Institute of Technology's Department of Marine and Environmental Systems, and the NWS Melbourne post tropical cyclone report lists both readings at 1630 UTC. The same station recorded a minimum pressure of 973.0 millibars at that hour, close to the 975.3 millibars the Vero Beach airport reported at 1531 UTC. That reading places the strongest wind at Sebastian Inlet around midday, after the eye had already left the coast to the south.

Inland numbers are lower and incomplete. The Vero Beach airport ASOS logged 35 knots sustained and a 48 knot gust in the morning, but the NWS notes that the Vero Beach and Fort Pierce sites failed during or prior to the height of the storm, so their true peaks were not captured (NWS Melbourne). The jetty site, exposed to open water at the mouth of the inlet, is the closest thing to a full Sebastian record.

Yes, an F1 tornado from a Wilma rain band destroyed a beachfront home about 3 miles north of Sebastian Inlet early on October 24, 2005, and a separate F0 touched down in western Indian River County the evening before (NWS Melbourne).

The F1 came ashore from a rainband moving northwest toward the Brevard coast. The NWS Melbourne survey says it removed the upper floor of a house built over a ground level garage, on the barrier island north of Sebastian Inlet, and the same rotating storm then touched down in Palm Bay and again as an F1 in West Melbourne, where it destroyed a large section of an apartment roof. The NWS photo set for Wilma includes images labeled as tornado damage north of the Sebastian Inlet Bridge.

The Indian River County tornado struck on October 23, ahead of the hurricane. Several public reports came in of a tornado about 10 miles east of Yeehaw Junction, and a ground survey confirmed tree damage along State Road 60, the road that links Vero Beach with the interior of the county (NWS Melbourne). Both tornadoes came from the long-lived rain bands that Wilma pushed up the Atlantic side of the state.

Indian River County reported minor wind damage from Wilma, with trees and power lines down, and a communications tower that blew down and damaged the county Emergency Operations Center (NWS Melbourne).

Rain was moderate: the Vero Beach airport measured 5.53 inches for the storm, compared with 13.26 inches at Kennedy Space Center, where the heaviest totals fell in northern Brevard (NWS Melbourne). On the beaches from Cape Canaveral to Jupiter Inlet, which include the Sebastian Inlet State Park shoreline, a brief period of onshore wind followed by strong north wind cut beach erosion of 1 to 3 feet.

The federal record dates Wilma's Florida disaster to the same day the Sebastian Inlet jetty gauge peaked: FEMA's major disaster declaration DR-1609 was issued on October 24, 2005, with an incident period of October 23 to November 18, 2005 (FEMA). Eight years later, in a June 2013 Vero News report on storm readiness, Sebastian City Manager Al Minner contrasted the 2004 hurricanes with Wilma, saying the city was hit again the following year by Hurricane Wilma, which was wimpy by comparison (Vero News).