With Hurricane Michael swirling around her, Loren Beltran thought the safest place would be her boyfriend's apartment, in a sturdy building designed to withstand a Category Five storm -- the maximum.

But it never occurred to her, in the rushing and the chaos and the wet, that the building was surrounded by trees and pines.

They only brought more danger for her and her three-year-old daughter.

As she took shelter there "the wind sounded absolutely terrible, like the kind of monster's roar you hear in a horror movie," said Beltran, 38.

Then came the wait in the brief still of the storm's eye, as it passed over Florida's northern Panhandle region Wednesday.

"Here comes the second part," she thought.

"First a tree fell, and then almost an hour went by. We heard another huge noise, and the wind sent the tree crashing through the window into a bedroom."

Thankfully she and her family were in another room.

"I had just come running out of that room about five minutes before," she said.

Beltran and her boyfriend tried to place towels and other objects to block the incoming rain, but it was futile.

She had fled to the apartment earlier from her own home.

"My house, which is in Mexico Beach, is under water," said Beltran, distraught after learning that water had reached the ceiling of her damaged home, in a district of beach towns that depend on tourism and fishing.

"I lost everything I have," she said. "But thank God, we are still alive.

Hurricane Michael made landfall Wednesday as a catastrophic Category 4 storm with winds of 155 miles per hour (250 kph).

When the eye of the storm reached Mexico Beach, 32 kilometers (20 miles) south of the larger Panama City, it poured so hard that at some points rain was moving horizontally, Beltran recalled.

Many brick buildings were partly collapsed.

More trees were toppled than standing.

Metal containers, pieces of roofing, satellite antennas and stoplights all were strewn on the ground.

As Beltran and her boyfriend tried to stop the deluge, there was a new worry: Whether the storm surge of rising waters would be as bad as forecasters feared.

If so, it could simply carry away what's left, she feared.

Michael: Most violent US hurricane since 1969
Washington (AFP) Oct 11, 2018 - Hurricane Michael, which tore into Florida on Wednesday, went in just two days from tropical storm status to a Category 4 hurricane, on a scale with a maximum of five.

Here are some figures which illustrate the power of Michael on the continental United States and which "took forecasters by surprise," according to Phil Klotzbach, a research scientist in the Department of Atmospheric Science at Colorado State University.

"This came out of nowhere, developed on a weekend so it didn't really get much attention at all until basically yesterday," he said.

- Wind speed -

Michael hit Florida with wind speeds of 155 miles per hour (250 kilometers per hour), placing it almost into Category 5 scale, which starts at 157 mph.

Never in recorded weather history has a hurricane hit the mainland United States at such a speed in October, the month marking the end of the June to November hurricane season.

Looking at the entire hurricane season, Michael had the strongest winds since 1992 and Hurricane Andrew.

Only two other storms in recorded American weather history -- that is, since 1851 -- had stronger winds. They were in 1969 and 1935.

- Pressure, a better measure -

Meteorologists use another measure to evaluate hurricane intensity: central pressure.

This is preferred by Klotzbach, who explains that it is more precise for historical comparisons because it is measured precisely by an airplane flying in the middle of the storm's eye, whereas "wind is going to be different everywhere along the hurricane."

"The pressure gives an idea of the size of the storm," he said.

Measured in this way -- the lower the pressure the stronger the hurricane -- Michael was the most powerful since Hurricane Camille in 1969.

- How much damage? -

In any case, no matter how you measure it, Michael is among the most powerful hurricanes in recent memory along with Camille in 1969, Andrew in 1992 and Katrina in 2005.

The calculation changes if you take into account Puerto Rico, the US island territory in the Caribbean that was devastated by Hurricane Maria last year. The death toll was revised to 2,975 fatalities, either in the storm itself or later as the health care and utilities grids failed.

In terms of damage the most costly year was 2017, when besides the Caribbean several US coastal states were hit by powerful hurricanes that moved slowly and dumped record rainful for days.

Major cities such as Houston were flooded, causing as much as $300 billion in damage, according to estimates.

The bill for 2018 is not yet known. It was a relatively calm year except for hurricanes Michael and Florence last month.

In the case of Michael the damage will be mainly from wind rather than rain.

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Florida girds for 'extremely dangerous' category 4 hurricane
Panama City, United States (AFP) Oct 10, 2018
Hurricane Michael closed in on Florida's Gulf Coast Wednesday as an "extremely dangerous" category four storm packing winds of up to 140 mph (220 kph) and a huge sea surge, the National Hurricane Center said. Forecasters were calling it an "unprecedented" weather event for the area. The center said the storm could grow and is expected to slam ashore later in the day in Florida as a "life-threatening event." As outer rainbands from the storm lashed the coast, it said a storm surge of up to 13 ... read more