1954 Atlantic hurricane season

Three hurricanes aimed at the northeast

The Monthly Weather Review summary for 1954 counted eight storms, about normal, but noted that the major hurricanes again recurved north at low latitudes. No storm was charted from the eastern Atlantic, and Florida, Georgia and the eastern Gulf states escaped tropical storms altogether. Instead three hurricanes passed through the North Atlantic states and New England in seven weeks. With the historical expectation of only 5 to 10 New England hurricanes per century, the authors called two in one year extraordinary.

The site's archive holds 16 tropical storms, 7 hurricanes and 3 major hurricanes, with an accumulated cyclone energy of 104.4. The gap with the 1954 count comes from later additions: an unnamed mid-Atlantic hurricane in late September and early October that the Weather Bureau added in a 1955 addendum, several weak storms found by a 2015 reanalysis, and a second Alice that formed on 30 December. The archive counts that storm under 1954, with its last observation on 6 January 1955.

Alice floods the Rio Grande

Hurricane Alice formed fast in the western Gulf on 24 June and reached hurricane force early on 25 June, then moved inland south of Brownsville and up the Rio Grande Valley past Laredo. The archive gives it a 95 kt peak on 25 June. Its winds did little damage; its rain did the rest. Floods on the Pecos and the lower Rio Grande killed 17 people in Texas and an estimated 38 in Mexico, according to the Weather Bureau. Rain reached 24.07 inches near Pandale, and the Rio Grande rose to its highest level since 1865.

Tropical Storm Barbara came ashore at Vermilion Bay, Louisiana, on 29 July with rain the Weather Bureau judged more helpful than harmful. In September, Florence reached Mexico between Tuxpan and Nautla, with press reports of 5 dead and more than $1,500,000 damage around Poza Rica, mostly to bananas. Gilda skirted northern Honduras and came ashore near Stann Creek in British Honduras on 27 September; its rain flooded the valleys around San Pedro Sula, and press reports put the dead at 29.

Carol and Edna, eleven days apart

Hurricane Carol formed near the northeastern Bahamas on 26 and 27 August and stalled for three days before accelerating north-northeast. It passed very near Cape Hatteras on the night of 30 August, where gusts reached 90 to 100 mph, and North Carolina damage came to $227,500. By the morning of 31 August it was just south of Long Island. Block Island measured a 130 mph gust, and about a third of Providence, Rhode Island, lay under 8 to 10 feet of water for several hours. The archive gives Carol a 100 kt peak on 31 August.

The Weather Bureau put Carol's toll in the North Atlantic states at 60 dead and more than $460 million in damage to property and crops, in 1954 dollars. Its final landfall came at Old Saybrook, Connecticut, as a Category 3 storm, and the surge in Narragansett Bay reached 14.4 feet, higher than in 1938.

Hurricane Edna formed near 22° N, 70° W on 6 September, swept the outer Bahamas and followed Carol's path 11 days later. It passed just east of Cape Hatteras on the night of 10 September with about 75 mph winds on the Capes, crossed about over Cape Cod on 11 September and moved into eastern Maine, Nova Scotia and New Brunswick. Brookhaven National Laboratory on Long Island measured 95 mph. The Weather Bureau estimated New England damage at over $40 million, with 20 dead, mostly drowned. The archive gives Edna a 110 kt peak on 9 September, well before it reached New England.

Hazel from Haiti to the Carolinas

Hurricane Hazel formed near Grenada on 5 October and moved west through the Caribbean, growing as it went; a Navy crew flying into it on 8 October hit turbulence that badly injured one airman. Hazel turned north on the night of 9 and 10 October and crossed Haiti's southwest peninsula. Winds, seas, floods and landslides there killed an estimated 400 to 1,000 people, including 200 or more buried by landslides. In the Bahamas six of 15 people aboard a sailboat drowned near Inagua.

The archive records Hazel as the season's strongest storm, with 115 kt winds, Category 4, at 00 UTC on 15 October, and the lowest pressure of the year, 938 hPa. Hazel came ashore near the North Carolina and South Carolina border later that day, a Category 4 landfall in the current best track. Myrtle Beach recorded gusts of 106 mph and Wilmington 98 mph, while observers between Myrtle Beach and Cape Fear estimated 130 to 150 mph. Every pier along 170 miles of coast was destroyed, rows of beach homes vanished, and the tide in places ran more than 17 feet above mean low water.

The Carolinas counted 20 deaths, mostly drownings, and about $163 million in damage, in 1954 dollars. Hazel then raced north-northwest at up to 60 mph, passed through the western suburbs of Washington and crossed Pennsylvania and New York into Ontario with little loss of strength. Rain topped 9 inches in western Virginia, and floods around Toronto killed 78 people. The Weather Bureau put the death toll north of the Carolinas at about 149, including the 78 in Canada.

Retired names and a first photograph

The Weather Bureau put casualties from Alice, Carol, Edna, Florence and Hazel on the North American mainland at about 311, 43 of them in Mexico and 78 in Canada, and total damage likely above $1 billion. 1954 was the costliest season on record at the time. Carol, Edna and Hazel became the first Atlantic names retired, and Grady Norton, head of the Miami hurricane office, died of a stroke while tracking Hazel.

A weak depression that crossed southern Texas in early October gave forecasters something new. A Navy rocket launched from White Sands on 5 October photographed it from about 100 miles up, the first large-scale image of a tropical cyclone. The second Alice formed northeast of the Lesser Antilles on 30 December, passed through the Leeward Islands on 2 January and peaked at 80 kt in the archive on 1 January.