1955 Atlantic hurricane season

The costliest season on record

Gordon Dunn, Walter Davis and Paul Moore of the Miami hurricane office wrote the Monthly Weather Review summary. They counted 13 tropical storms, 10 of hurricane force, against a normal of about 9.2 storms and 5 hurricanes; only 1950 had produced more hurricanes. Their count includes Hurricane Alice, which passed through the Leeward Islands in January 1955. The site's archive places Alice in 1954, where its track began on 30 December, and records 13 tropical storms, 9 hurricanes and 4 major hurricanes for 1955, with an accumulated cyclone energy of 158.2.

The authors cited a hypothesis by Jerome Namias and C. Dunn: in late July the Azores upper ridge pushed northeast into Europe and carved a deep trough along the Spanish and African coasts, where Connie probably formed. Low pressure over the tropical Atlantic and high pressure farther north persisted from June through August. A strong La Niña favored the active season.

The Weather Bureau estimated the year's Atlantic hurricanes killed 1,518 or more people and caused $1,053,410,000 in damage, including 218 deaths and $889,310,000 in the United States, in 1955 dollars. The authors called the damage figures incomplete, and 1,518 was the highest death toll since the Bureau began recording it in 1942. No hurricane struck the Gulf coast or Florida for the second year running.

Connie and Diane flood the Northeast

Hurricane Connie formed on 3 August and passed 40 to 50 miles north of the Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico. A dropsonde found its lowest pressure, 944 mb, on 8 August east of the Bahamas, and the archive gives Connie a 120 kt peak on 7 August. It then stalled and filled off the Carolinas for two to three days before crossing the coast near Morehead City on 12 August. Fort Macon reported 75 mph winds with 100 mph gusts, and tides rose up to 7 feet above normal. The Weather Bureau put North Carolina damage at $40 million, three-quarters of it to crops, with no deaths in the state; other accounts give 27 deaths in North Carolina.

Connie's slow approach dropped 10 to 12 inches of rain from Chesapeake Bay northward, soaking the ground for what came next. Fourteen people died when a boat capsized in Chesapeake Bay, and more died in Washington, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.

Hurricane Diane took shape northeast of the Leeward Islands on 10 August, while Connie sat off the Georgia coast. It deepened fast on the night of 11 August and turned northeast, perhaps under the pull of Connie, before settling on a west-northwest course. The archive gives Diane a 90 kt peak on 13 August. By the time its centre passed Wilmington on 17 August the strongest station wind was 50 mph at Hatteras.

Diane's rain fell on the saturated Northeast. Windsor Locks, Connecticut, measured 12.05 inches in 23 hours, where Hartford's 90-year 24-hour record had been 6.2 inches. Small mountain rivers rose within hours in Pennsylvania, New York and southern New England. The Weather Bureau estimated Diane's damage at $754,706,000, $600,000,000 of it in New England, and about 200 deaths, all from flooding; with indirect losses it called Diane the first billion-dollar hurricane.

Ione, a third North Carolina hurricane

Hurricane Ione peaked on 17 September with a 938 mb centre and winds of about 125 mph, 120 kt in the archive, then weakened slightly before crossing the North Carolina coast on 19 September. It moved only 45 miles in 10 hours west of Morehead City, and Maysville recorded 16.63 inches of rain. The Weather Bureau put damage, mostly to crops, at $88,035,000 and counted 7 deaths directly or indirectly caused by the storm. Ione was the third hurricane through eastern North Carolina in six weeks, and a new radar at Hatteras, installed in July, tracked all three.

Gladys, Hilda and Janet in Mexico

Three storms came ashore within 150 miles of Tampico in 25 days. Gladys, briefly of hurricane force by aircraft reports, dropped about 25 inches of rain on Tampico in three days in early September. Hurricane Hilda crossed the southeastern tip of Cuba, where 4 people died, then the Yucatán, and moved inland at Tampico early on 19 September. The anemometer there recorded 105 mph before blowing away, and newspapers reported 300 deaths and $120,000,000 damage, mostly from floods.

Hurricane Janet passed just south of Barbados on 22 September, the island's first hurricane in 57 years, and between Grenada and Carriacou the next day. The Weather Bureau counted 38 deaths in Barbados and 122 in the Grenadines. On 26 September a Navy reconnaissance plane with a crew of 9 and 2 journalists reported that it was entering the storm's core and was never heard from again. On 27 September Swan Island's observer estimated winds of 200 mph before the antennas came down.

The archive places Janet's 150 kt peak, Category 5, at 00 UTC on 28 September, with the season's lowest pressure of 914 hPa. The eye reached Corozal and Chetumal about 1 a.m. local time that day. The Chetumal airport anemometer registered 175 mph before it collapsed, and a barometer reading of 27.00 inches in the eye matched the lowest reliable land readings then on record. British Honduras counted 16 dead and about $5,000,000 in damage, and the death toll in Quintana Roo was estimated at about 500.

Janet crossed the Bay of Campeche and moved inland between Veracruz and Nautla on 29 September. Its rain fell on the Tampico area, already flooded by Gladys and Hilda, and the New Orleans Weather Bureau office called the Tampico floods one of the greatest natural disasters in the region. Janet killed at least 716 people across its path.

Brenda, Katie and the storms at sea

Tropical Storm Brenda crossed the coast east of New Orleans on 1 August, raising tides of 5 to 6 feet at Shell Beach; two people died near Mobile. Hurricanes Edith and Flora curved through the central Atlantic, and Hurricane Katie crossed Hispaniola near the Haiti and Dominican Republic border on 16 October with winds estimated at 115 mph, badly damaging Anse-à-Pitre and Pedernales. Katie closed the archive's tropical record on 19 October.

Connie, Diane, Ione and Janet were retired, a record at the time, and that the losses led the US government to fund a new office for monitoring tropical cyclones in 1956, the forerunner of the National Hurricane Center.