It Was No Breeze

On the satellite pictures it resembled a living creature, angrily swirling and pulsing, a one-eyed monster of awesome dimensions. In a vortex of turbulent weather spanning 450 miles, the whirling body of the hurricane seemed to have a mind and will of its own as it marched across the Caribbean, devastating almost everything in its path.

Hurricane Gilbert uprooted not only trees but lives. It chewed across the length of Jamaica, leaving 500,000 people homeless, and virtually destroying the island's economy. It slammed into Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula, shattering the glassy facades of tourist hotels and destroying the homes of 30,000 residents. By the time Gilbert touched the trembling but well-prepared Gulf coast, its epic force had been muted. Still, flooding and high tides swamped beaches and highways and forced more than 100,000 people in Texas, Louisiana and Mississippi to flee in anticipation of its virulence.

Belying its mild-sounding name, Gilbert became unique as a force -- the most powerful storm to hit the western hemisphere in this century. Its counterclockwise wind speed peaked at an estimated 200 m.p.h. at 10,000 ft. and 175 m.p.h. at ground level; its 26.13-in. barometric pressure was the lowest ever recorded. Gilbert was blamed for at least 100 deaths and billions of dollars in damage in the Caribbean and Mexico. An additional 200 people . were feared drowned after a rain-swollen river jumped its banks and overturned four buses Saturday in Monterrey, Mexico. But highly accurate tracking and early warnings prevented more widespread loss of life. The storm ranked well below the toll of recent killer hurricanes like David (1,100 deaths in 1979) and Flora (7,200 deaths in 1963).

Gilbert blew Mike and George off the front pages, as its record dimensions and ominous approach dominated news reports. Overnight, specialists like Bob Sheets, director of the National Hurricane Center in Miami, became trusted gurus, interpreting the big blow with computers. Somehow the storm seemed the violent culmination of a season in which Mother Nature has done anything but nurture, producing the hottest American summer in 50 years, a drought that parched the Midwest, forest fires that turned U.S. parks into cinders, floods that submerged large parts of Bangladesh and Sudan.

Only in its final landfall did Gilbert reveal a benign side. The hurricane hit a relatively unpopulated area of Mexico, 110 miles southwest of Brownsville, Texas, where the terrain of mountains and flat farmland helped undermine its strength. It did bring more than 6 in. of rain, causing flooding in an area the size of Colorado. At week's end it had spun off some 30 tornadoes twisting around coastal Texas. High winds and battering rain were expected as far north as Chicago. Gilbert, according to Mark Zimmer of the National Hurricane Center, will turn into a "huge rainmaking machine" that will bring water to parched areas extending to the lower Ohio River Valley.