This weekend marks the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Hugo, the destructive Category 5 hurricane that struck Guadeloupe, Montserrat, St. Croix, Puerto Rico, South Carolina, and North Carolina in September of the 1989 Atlantic hurricane season, killing 109 people and leaving nearly 100,000 homeless. Hugo developed from a tropical wave that moved off the coast of Africa on September 9th. The storm tracked westward, and became a tropical storm on the 11th, and a hurricane on the 13th. It reached its peak intensity as a Category 5 hurricane, and moved toward the United States. Hugo made landfall in South Carolina as a Category 4. The storm caused $7 billion ($16.3 billion in 2006 USD) in damages within the U.S. alone and $10 billion overall, making it the most damaging hurricane ever recorded at that particular time, although Hugo was itself surpassed by Hurricane Andrew three years later, which was eventually surpassed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005.

Sattelite photo of Hurricane Hugo from http://rsd.gsfc.nasa.gov/rsd/images/HugoRed.html