Tropical Storm Cindy (1993)

Tropical Storm Cindy was a weak but unusually wet Atlantic tropical cyclone that caused disastrous floods and mudslides across Martinique in August 1993. Cindy formed east of the island and became the annual hurricane season's third named storm on August 14. Due to unfavorable atmospheric conditions, Cindy remained disorganized throughout its journey across the northeastern Caribbean Sea. After attaining maximum sustained winds of , the storm began to weaken from an interaction with the high terrain of Hispaniola. It made landfall in the Dominican Republic as a tropical depression on August 16, and dissipated over the territory the following day. Despite its poor cloud structure, Cindy dropped torrential rain over portions of the northeastern Caribbean. The island of Martinique received a record of rain over a 24-hour period, causing severe river flooding throughout northern villages and communes. Le Prêcheur was particularly devastated by an extensive debris flow, which dragged away entire structures. The storm wrought $19 million (1993 USD) in damage across Martinique, and left two people dead and hundreds homeless on the island. En route to Hispaniola, Cindy affected the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico with rough surf and moderate rain. Heavy downpours and flooding killed two people in the Dominican Republic, though the exact extent of the damage there is unknown. The origins of Tropical Storm Cindy can be traced to a tropical wave that departed the western coast of Africa on August 8, 1993. Over the following days, the wave tracked steadily west-northwestward across the tropical Atlantic while retaining a distinct cloud pattern on satellite images. Although data from a reconnaissance aircraft mission on August 13 indicated that the system lacked a defined wind circulation, a second mission at 12:00 UTC the next day revealed an improvement in its structure at the lower levels of the atmosphere. The National Hurricane Center (NHC) thus classified the system as a tropical depression—a tropical cyclone with sustained winds of less than —and initiated public advisories on it soon thereafter.