Event Briefing

Hurricane Sally made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane on 16 September 2020 in Gulf Shores, AL, at approximately the same location and exactly 16 years to the day when Hurricane Ivan made landfall as a Category 3 storm in 2004. Notably, Sally's slow forward speed (only 2 mph as it moved inland) led to heavy rainfall, making flooding a significant hazard in this event (Chincar, 2020). Two have been reported dead in Alabama — a drowning and a death during the cleanup in Baldwin County, while Florida authorities were still looking for a missing kayaker feared dead in Escambia County, at the time this briefing was released. Millions of dollars in losses have already been reported as officials in Alabama and the Florida panhandle continue to assess the storm’s impacts (Wang and Reeves, 2020). Since Sally was not a major hurricane and responses to Hurricane Laura were just concluding, StEER did not formally activate a Field Assessment Structural Team (FAST) for this event. However, with a number of StEER members residing in the affected area and intending to assess damage in their home state, StEER helped to support their efforts using its Fulcrum platform, while a small VAST compiled information on the hurricane and its impacts for this Event Briefing, which also includes a summary of the field observations of regional StEER members.