In August 1992, the eye of Hurricane Andrew (a category-4 hurricane) passed within 50 km of the Isles Dernieres, a barrier-island chain adjacent to the central Louisiana coast. Lying in Hurricane Andrew's path was a site on the central part of Trinity Island, a low-lying island within the Isles Dernieres, where detailed topographic surveys had been conducted between August 1986 and July 1991. During that five-year period, the net impact of storms was to produce approximately 90 m of berm-crest migration to the north and a sediment loss of 81 m3/m of shoreline. Hurricane Andrew was powerful enough to strip all the sand from the beach face, leaving no berm. A survey at that site after Hurricane Andrew's passage found a sediment loss of 92 m3/m. Typically, the islands of the Isles Dernieres consist of mud with a sand veneer on the Gulf side. Based on a previously determined location of the sand-mud interface, approximately 85 m3/m of the sediment removed by Hurricane Andrew was sand; the rest was mud from the island's core. In general, sand moved northward across the muddy, low-lying posterior of the island filling the small bayous that incise the island and collecting in the southern edge of Lake Pelto, the large lagoon situated between the Isles Dernieres and mainland. Stripping the sand left the muddy core of the island exposed, and in the year following Hurricane Andrew's passage, that surface remained sandless while the upper foreshore eroded approximately 25 m.