Hurricane Camille 1969

On the late night of Sunday, August 17, 1969, powerful Category 5 Hurricane Camille approached the Mississippi Gulf Coast. It would make landfall at peak intensity of 173 mph (150 knots) and a minimal central pressure of 900 millibars (26.58 inches mercury) around 11 pm CDT at Waveland, Mississippi. The radius of maximum wind was 6 to 8 nm (7 to 10 miles) wide but hurricane force winds expanded about 40 miles from the center and swept damaging winds from the mouth of the Mississippi River in Louisiana to Biloxi, Mississippi. Gusts were believed to reach close to 200 mph though any instrumentation was destroyed before recording such values.

As of 1969, Hurricane Camille produced the highest storm surge ever recorded on the United States shores. A large portion of Harrison County, MS coast experienced a surge of 16 to 24.2 feet. The peak surge happened just east of the landfall center at Pass Christian, MS, just east of the Bay of Saint Louis entrance. A large scour of the shore line penetrated roughly to the CSX train tracks, about 1/2 mile inland of the coast. These surge values were exceeded 36 years later by Hurricane Katrina on August 29, 2005.

Camille had its origins as a tropical wave that moved off the African coast on August 5th. It tracked across the open Atlantic Ocean as an unimpressive tropical wave. It was not until an Air Force reconnaissance aircraft flew into the disturbance southeast of the western tip of Cuba on August 14th that it was found to have a circulation and 55 mph surface winds. It was named Tropical Storm Camille. The system moved across the western portions of Cuba and entered the Gulf of Mexico, where it intensified to a major hurricane rather quickly. Camille reached Category 5 status the evening of August 16th, based on ship reports, and would attain that intensity through landfall the night of August 17th.

• Fatalities - Total: 258. MS 135, LA 9, VA 112, WV 2
• Missing - Total: 68. MS 27, VA 41
• Total Families suffering loss: 77, 985
• Dwellings destroyed: 6,011
• Small businesses destroyed or major damage: 789
• Monetary Losses (1969 USD) - Total: $1.42B, MS $950M, LA $322M, AL $8M, VA $140M, WV $0.75M
• Monetary Losses (Adjusted to 2019 USD) - $9,915,944,611.72

Upon landfall, Camille tracked through the entire state of Mississippi rated as a hurricane up to near Jackson, and a tropical storm to the Memphis area. Camille's circulation remained intact as it moved into the Appalachians, producing torrential rainfall and widespread flash flooding in Virginia and West Virginia. The storm casualties included 114 deaths due to inland rainfall flooding in the mountainous areas. The circulation then moved off the middle Atlantic seaboard and was able to recover in a tropical storm once again in the western Atlantic Ocean.

Saffir-Simpson Category 5 Hurricane History: A category 5 hurricane has winds in excess of 157 mph (137 knots). Since 1851, only four (4) category 5 hurricanes made landfall on United States mainland.

1. Labor Day Hurricane - September 2, 1935, Florida Keys
2. Hurricane Camille - August 17-18, 1969, Mississippi Coast
3. Hurricane Andrew - August 23, 1992, South Florida
4. Hurricane Michael - October 10, 2018, Florida Panhandle

Credits:

DeAngelis, Richard M. & E.R. Nelson, Hurricane Camille, August 5-22, 1969. Reprint from U.S. Department of Commerce, ESSA Climatological Data, National Summary, Vol. 20, No. 8, 1969.

Kieper, Margaret E., C.W. Landsea, J.L. Beven II, A Reanalysis of Hurricane Camille. Article in Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society · April 2015 DOI: 10.1175/BAMS-D-14-00137.1

NOAA National Center for Environmental Prediction, Weather Prediction Center, Silver Spring, MD.

Track map generated in ArcGIS Online using the NOAA Enterprise License.