Dean slams into Mayan coast

Here's a great satellite image showing the eye of Category 5 Dean hitting the sparsely populated southern Yucatan coast just around 4:30am EDT near the port city of Majahual, Mexico, about 40 miles north of Chetumal, Mexico, a city of 130,000 just north of the Belize-Mexico border. Maximum sustained winds at landfall were near 165 mph with gusts approaching 200 mph. Dean became the first Category 5 hurricane to make landfall since Hurricane Andrew hit Florida in 1992. At 906 mb, Dean was also the third lowest pressure at landfall behind the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the Florida Keys and Hurricane Gilbert of 1988 in Cancun Mexico.

As bad as this storm was, it could have been a lot worse had the storm come ashore about 100 miles north which would have caused billions of dollars in damage to the many resorts around Cozumel and Cancun.