![]() ![]() Early Saturday August 16, with Camille located about 420 miles south of Panama City, Florida, forecasters issued a hurricane watch for the Gulf coast from Biloxi, Mississippi, to St. Hurricane Camille regained strength as it reached the warm Gulf of Mexico waters, moving at about 10 mph in a north-northwesterly direction. Of rain over western sections of the island. Slightly over Cuba, generating 92-mph winds, and releasing 10 inches On August 15 distinguished Camille as the most intense hurricane sinceīeulah in 1967 ( ESSA, 1969a). A bulletin issued by the National Hurricane Center at 3 p.m. Winds extending out 125 to 150 miles to the north of the center andĥ0 miles to the south ( USACE 1970) ( Tableġ). Toward western Cuba, that afternoon, winds reached 115 mph, with gale-force Hurricane with a northwesterly track of about 9 mph. Forecasters classified Camille as a tropical storm locatedĦ0 miles west of Grand Cayman Island, 480 miles south of Miami ( FigureĮarly on Friday, August 15, Camille developed into a small but potent Of 29.50 inches of mercury and surface winds of 55 mph ( USACEġ970). Later, the pilot of a Navy reconnaissance plane observed a central pressure Was about 480 miles east of the Caribbean's leeward islands. Wave off the coast of Africa on August 5, 1969. With satellite imagery, forecasters identified a typical tropical NCAR is sponsored by the National Science Foundation. We gratefully acknowledge the support of the NOAA Coastal Services Center in the development of this site. For those wishing to learn more about Camille, or hurricanes more generally, several bibliographies are included on this web site. Section III provides a review of the response to the event, and Section IV distills a number of the lessons learned. Section II examines the impacts of the storm, both along the Gulf Coast and in the Appalachian Mountains. Section I reviews the forecasts of the storm's approach and the subsequent evacuation. This report proceeds in four sections (after Pielke and Pielke 1997). Another storm like Camille might open a window of opportunity to improve the nation's hurricane policies, but it would be far better if, instead of waiting for that future storm, we learned the lessons that history has already provided. The greatest challenge we face is to turn that knowledge into practical action. For the most part, society acknowledges its need to improve response to hurricanes. The subtext of this report is that many of the lessons of Camille have been relearned in subsequent hurricane impacts with hurricanes Agnes, Frederic, Alicia, Hugo, Andrew, Opal, and so forth. This report reviews the Camille experience with an eye to lessons learned and lessons lost from that event. This report, and the web site of which it is a part, takes advantage of the thirtieth anniversary of Camille's landfall to raise awareness about the hurricane hazard facing the United States. Estimates of potential losses from a single hurricane approach $100 billion. The hurricane-prone regions of the United States have developed dramatically as people have moved to the coast and the nation's wealth has grown. When this future storm strikes, it will make landfall over conditions drastically different from those in 1969. ![]() Another storm of Camille's intensity will strike the United States, the only question is when. But Camille is also a harbinger of disasters to come. In its aftermath, the storm was called the greatest catastrophe ever to strike the United States and perhaps the most significant economic weather event in the world's history.įor many, Camille is a distant memory, an historical footnote from a time long gone. All told, Camille caused more than 200 deaths and billions of dollars in damage. After wreaking havoc along the Gulf Coast, Camille's remnants deposited a tremendous amount of rain in the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia and West Virginia, causing further damage. Camille, a Saffir/Simpson Category 5 storm, was the strongest storm to directly strike the United States in the twentieth century. Thirty years ago, Hurricane Camille struck the United States Gulf Coast with an unprecedented fury. Pielke, Jr., Chantal Simonpietri, and Jennifer Oxelson ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |