1951 Atlantic hurricane season

No US hurricane, heavy losses in the Caribbean

Grady Norton's Monthly Weather Review summary charted ten tropical disturbances in 1951, eight of them hurricanes, and called it an average season with no unusual tracking problems. No hurricane-force wind reached the United States coast. 1951 was the first year since 1937 without a hurricane landfall in the country. The Miami hurricane centre coordinated more than 100 reconnaissance flights and 156 advisories, busy but well short of the 1950 record.

The site's archive holds 12 tropical storms, 8 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes, with an accumulated cyclone energy of 126.3. The two extra storms come from later reanalysis of systems the 1951 summary did not chart: a January storm southeast of Bermuda and a December hurricane in the eastern Atlantic. Both would likely have been classed as subtropical from the 1970s on. The archive's first tropical-stage observation falls on 4 January and the last on 11 December.

Able, a hurricane before the season began

Hurricane Able grew out of a cold upper-level low that a trough left behind near Bermuda in mid-May. In a companion Monthly Weather Review paper, Paul Moore and Walter Davis linked its growth to unusually cold air aloft, about 7 °C below normal at 300 mb, sitting over air warmed by the Gulf Stream. A ship 125 miles east of Daytona Beach reported gales and 25 to 30 foot waves on the morning of 17 May, and a Navy reconnaissance squadron that had just arrived in Miami for the season found a hurricane that day.

The site's archive has Able reaching hurricane strength on 17 May, and Norton called it the earliest fully developed Atlantic hurricane then on record. Able looped over the Little Bahama Bank, where Walker's Cay reported 90 to 95 mph winds for five hours, then passed 70 miles east of Cape Hatteras on 21 May and died out near 40° N, 60° W. Aircraft estimated 100 knots at the time. The current record, which the archive follows, peaks Able at 80 kt, Category 1.

Hurricane Charlie in Jamaica and Mexico

Hurricane Charlie crossed the Lesser Antilles on 15 August as a weak system and regained hurricane force in the Caribbean. Its centre skirted the south coast of Jamaica on the night of 17 August, passing several miles south of Kingston, where winds topped an estimated 110 mph, the pressure fell to 973 mb and 17 inches of rain fell. The best track gives a landfall wind just south of Kingston of 125 mph, Category 3, below the storm's later peak.

The Weather Bureau called it Jamaica's worst hurricane disaster of the century, reporting about $50,000,000 in property and crop damage, in 1951 dollars, 152 people killed, 2,000 injured and about 25,000 left homeless. Grand Cayman recorded 92 mph gusts. Charlie peaked in the archive at 115 kt, Category 4, on 20 August near the Yucatán Peninsula, which it crossed that night; crop losses there ran to 70 percent, with no deaths reported.

Charlie regained strength over the Gulf and came ashore near Tampico on 22 August. The city, on the southern edge of the eye, reported 110 mph winds and $1,160,000 in property damage, with 4 people killed. Torrential rain burst dams and flooded rivers west and northwest of the city, and press reports put drownings there at more than 100. Norton estimated Charlie's total loss of life as almost certainly above 250; other accounts give 257 deaths in Mexico.

Easy and Fox turn around each other

Hurricane Dog passed between Saint Lucia and Martinique on 2 September. Fort-de-France airport reported 100 knots. On Martinique 1,000 homes were destroyed, 90 percent of the banana crop was lost, 5 people drowned and damage reached about $3,000,000; on Saint Lucia two people drowned. Dog weakened in the Caribbean and dissipated southeast of Swan Island on 5 September.

Hurricane Easy, found by the steamship Barn near 16.5° N, 42.5° W on 3 September, grew too violent for aircraft to penetrate by 7 September. Crews turning back from the south side estimated 140 knots and guessed at 160 to 200 mph near the centre. The storm was long listed as a Category 5; A 2015 reanalysis lowered its peak to 150 mph. The site's archive gives Easy 130 kt, Category 4, on 8 September and the season's lowest pressure, 937 hPa.

Small, fast Hurricane Fox shared Easy's whole life. Near Bermuda on 8 September the two pulled on each other and turned slightly counterclockwise, which Norton believed kept Easy from striking the island; it passed just southeast of Bermuda on 9 September. It was the first observed case of one hurricane shifting another's path. Fox reached about 115 to 120 mph by aircraft, a major hurricane of 100 kt in the archive.

How crosses Florida, Jig loops at sea

How crossed Florida from near Punta Gorda to Vero Beach on 2 October as a loosely organized storm, with squalls of 50 to 60 mph on the Keys and the east coast. Its rain flooded farm and pasture land around Lake Okeechobee and drowned cattle. The Weather Bureau estimated damage at about $2,000,000, with no deaths or injuries, the smallest US tropical storm loss since 1939. Over the Atlantic How became a hurricane and passed just off Cape Hatteras on 4 October. The ore ship Southern Isle broke apart in the surf off North Carolina, and 17 of its crew died.

Tropical Storm George reached Mexico south of Tampico on 21 September; one person drowned before landfall. Item, a very small system, stalled east-southeast of the Isle of Pines in mid-October; operational reports called it a hurricane, and the 2015 reanalysis lowered it to a tropical storm, as the archive records it. Hurricane Jig formed off the southeastern coast on 15 October and looped between Bermuda and Cape Hatteras before dying out on 20 October.

The last hurricane grew from a frontal storm east-northeast of Bermuda in early December. It gained a warm core over warmer water and became a tropical hurricane on 7 December, then crossed the Azores as a tropical storm late on 10 December while turning extratropical again. The archive gives it a 70 kt peak.