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Cape due for Category 3 hurricane; Dean misses tourism areas

Storm warning
Active hurricane cycle predicted to generate Category 3 vortex that could blast Cape Cod and New England area

Hurricane Bob hit Central and Eastern Massachusetts in mid-August 1991 with winds measured at more than 100 miles per hour on Cape Cod, where a storm surge 9.5 feet above the normal tide level at Buzzard’s Bay was observed.
“Bob was a very underrated hurricane”

Even as the Southwest was expected to feel the effects today of Hurricane Dean, which hit Mexico yesterday with top winds of 165 miles per hour, Massachusetts emergency planners and meteorologists hope people have good memories.

The last time Central Massachusetts was hit by a Category 3 hurricane with winds of 111 miles per hour or greater on the Saffir Simpson Hurricane Scale was late August 1954, when Hurricane Carol roared through eastern Connecticut and Rhode Island. Several businesses in Galilee, R.I., have pictures on their walls showing swamped shore roads and homes — visual testimony to the damage Carol wrought. About two weeks later, a weakening Category 3 Hurricane Edna lashed Cape Cod before coming ashore near Eastport, Maine, with sustained winds of nearly 100 miles per hour...  Telegram. 
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Hurricane Dean Misses Tourist Spots and Weakens
Drops from category 5 to 1

CHETUMAL, Mexico - Hurricane Dean hammered Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula with blistering winds and heavy rain on Tuesday, missing the prime tourist spots of the Mayan Riviera but causing damage in Chetumal, the state capital, before being downgraded to Category 1 from Category 5.   Roofs were ripped off homes, streets were flooded, power lines downed and trees snapped in two as Dean, the ninth-strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic, with winds in excess of 165 miles per hour, passed overhead.

Although the storm crossed the Yucatán Peninsula by midafternoon, the threat was far from over for Mexico. Hurricane Dean was in the southern waters of the Gulf of Mexico, where vast offshore oil fields produce most of the nation’s petroleum.  Dean had 80-mile-per-hour winds late Tuesday night, the National Hurricane Center in Miami said, and was expected to hit Mexico’s gulf coast, somewhere north of Veracruz, on Wednesday afternoon...  NY Times.