Multiple Aircraft Damaged at North Perry Airport

The notion of a Hurricane Season is facile. It sounds plausible, but in a formal sense, simply isn’t true.

Hurricanes are most common between June and November, with August through October being peak months for tropical cyclone events, but in point of fact, hurricanes can form at any time of year.

That said, Hurricane Ian looks to be something of a traditionalist, rising up to the fullness of his fury in the very moment of his statistical likelihood.

At approximately 21:30 EDT on the night of 27 September 2022, as the southeastern U.S. braced for Hurricane Ian’s landfall, a separate storm—believed to have been a tornado—struck the city of Pembroke Pines in southeastern Florida’s Broward County. Damage caused by the storm, though widespread, was particularly heavy at North Perry Airport (HWO), where some 15 aircraft were overturned and otherwise battered about, and a number of hangars were damaged.

Tornados can and do occur in conjunction with tropical storm systems. Hurricane Ian, at the time the aircraft were damaged on HWO, was a Category-three storm—the outer bands of which were sufficiently powerful to produce tornadoes.

Mario Torres, who witnessed the HWO incident, remarked: "It hit that corner where my house is at, it pushed our boat to the side, knocked a tree down, then it shot across.  We ran across the street because we realized there are kids right here and then we saw that plane flipped over, and then most of the planes, basically a domino effect.”

Mr. Torres described the atmospheric pressure differential characteristic of tornadic storms, stating he felt the air “sucked out of his home.” When the storm had passed, Torres states he exited his dwelling and observed what “looked like a twister” in the vicinity of North University and Pembroke Road.

Sharri Ali said of the storm: "I know it was going to be bad, that's why I left my house, to come to see and look at what's happening.” Ms. Ali runs an aircraft maintenance facility on HWO.

Witness Christian Colon’s account of the instance was less ambiguous: "It was a tornado and then I just screamed, the windows were going, and then the door flipped, and it was flying everywhere, even on the cars, so it was just crazy.”

The National Weather Service will presently survey the Pembroke Pines area storm damage for purpose of determining whether the causative phenomenon was indeed a tornado, or an alternate atmospheric event such as a microburst or highly localized storm cell.

FMI: www.noaa.gov