Ten years ago this evening tropical forecasters were tracking a Category-2 hurricane about 600 miles east of Miami, headed due west, with winds around 100 mph. But over the next day, Hurricane Andrew strengthened into a Category-5 storm - with sustained winds of 165 mph - making landfall in the wee hours of August 24.

Here's the last radar sweep of the Miami area before Andrew's winds blew the equipment off the roof. The donut of maroon is the eye wall, the ring of strongest winds and heaviest rain surrounding the eye. Fortunately for Miami, the eye came ashore about 25 miles to its south, so the city missed the full force of the eye wall, but unfortunately southern Dade County was devastated. Dr. Robert Sheets, then director of the National Hurricane Center, characterized the damage there as that of a "20-mile wide tornado." In and near this swath, an estimated 80,000 people lost their homes, and only 5 out of 5000 mobile homes were left habitable.

Andrew crossed south Florida, emerged into the Gulf of Mexico, and made a second landfall two days later over a sparsely populated section of Louisiana. All told, it left behind 26 billion dollars in damage in the U.S., making it by far the costliest hurricane in our country's history.