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Hurricane Dean was the strongest tropical cyclone of the 2007 Atlantic hurricane season. A Cape Verde-type hurricane that formed on August 13, 2007, Dean took a west-northwest path from the eastern Atlantic Ocean through the Saint Lucia Channel and into the Caribbean. It strengthened into a major hurricane, reaching Category 5 status on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale before passing just south of Jamaica on August 20. The storm made landfall on the Yucatán Peninsula on August 21 as a powerful Category 5 storm. It crossed the peninsula and emerged into the Bay of Campeche as a weaker storm, but still at hurricane strength. It intensified briefly before making a second landfall near Tecolutla, Mexico, on August 22. Dean drifted northwest, weakening into a remnant low which dissipated over the southwestern United States.

The hurricane's intense winds, waves, rains and storm surge were responsible for at least 45 deaths across ten countries, and caused estimated damages ofUS$1.5 billion. Dean's path through the Caribbean devastated crops, particularly those of Martinique and Jamaica. Upon reaching Mexico, Hurricane Dean was a Category 5 storm&mdash;the third-most intense Atlantic hurricane at landfall in recorded history. However, it missed major population centers, so it caused no deaths and less damage than its passage through the Caribbean islands as a Category 2 storm.

Dean was the first hurricane to make landfall in the Atlantic basin at Category 5 intensity in 15 years; the last storm to do so was Hurricane Andrew on August 24, 1992. Dean's landfall was far less damaging than Andrew's, but its long swath of damage earned its name retirement from the World Meteorological Organization's Atlantic hurricane naming lists.

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