1957 Atlantic hurricane season

A quiet year aimed at the Gulf coast

The Monthly Weather Review summary counted eight tropical storms in 1957, three of them hurricanes, against a recent normal of 10 storms and about 5 hurricanes. Storms struck the Gulf coast and spared the eastern seaboard, much as in 1956. All five storms that reached the United States came ashore between eastern Texas and northwestern Florida, and no storm made landfall anywhere on the East Coast. The site's archive agrees on 8 tropical storms and 3 hurricanes, 2 of them major, and gives an accumulated cyclone energy of 78.7.

Five of the eight storms formed in the Gulf of Mexico, the most since 1936, and no storm formed in July. The Weather Bureau estimated US property damage for the year at about $152,500,000 and reported none elsewhere.

Two June storms

An unnamed storm formed in the southern Gulf on 8 June and crossed into Apalachee Bay that evening. The reanalysis by Sandy Delgado and Chris Landsea puts landfall at 45 kt around 0030 UTC on 9 June. Rain reached nearly 15 inches in 48 hours at official stations around Suwannee County, with unofficial totals near 19 inches, and at least nine tornadoes or damaging windstorms hit northeastern Florida. Five of seven people aboard a small boat that capsized in the Gulf apparently drowned. Damage came to about $52,000.

Hurricane Audrey formed in the Bay of Campeche on 24 June, over Gulf waters 2° to 3° F above normal for June. Reconnaissance on 26 June found 90 knot winds and a 973 mb centre, and a tanker measured 969 mb on the morning of 27 June. The storm then deepened fast and sped up on its final approach. The reanalysis puts landfall at 1330 UTC on 27 June just east of the Louisiana and Texas border, at 110 kt and 946 mb, a Category 3; it lowered the landfall intensity from Category 4. That is also Audrey's peak in the archive.

Audrey's surge at Cameron

Water did most of the killing. Tides topped 12 feet above mean sea level along 24 miles of the Louisiana coast from Calcasieu Pass to Grand Chenier, and flooding reached as much as 25 miles inland over the low marsh. At Cameron the water rose 1.5 feet an hour to 10.6 feet. The authors noted that a surge forecast based on the last measured pressure of 973 mb would have suggested about 7.5 feet; the rapid deepening before landfall raised that to about 12.

The Weather Bureau listed 390 known dead, 371 of them in and near Cameron, plus 192 missing, many possibly among 127 unidentified bodies. It was the greatest loss of life in a US tropical storm since the New England hurricane of 1938. In the Cameron to Grand Chenier area 60 to 80 percent of houses were destroyed or floated off their foundations, and property damage was estimated at $150,000,000 in 1957 dollars. Later counts put the total at 416 deaths.

Audrey turned northeast inland, and tornadoes injured 14 people in Alabama. As an extratropical storm it re-intensified over the Ohio Valley and eastern Great Lakes, flooding parts of Illinois and Indiana and bringing winds of 95 to 100 mph to Jamestown, New York.

Carrie's 6,000 mile track

Hurricane Carrie began as a vortex south of the Cape Verde Islands on 2 September. On 7 September an Air Force plane from Bermuda flew nearly 17 hours and about 3,700 miles to reach it, and found a 20 mile eye and a surface pressure of 945 mb. The archive gives Carrie a 120 kt peak, Category 4, at 00 UTC on 8 September, and the season's lowest pressure, 945 hPa.

Carrie weakened, drifted north, turned northwest and strengthened again; on 16 September National Hurricane Research Project observers called it one of the most perfectly formed hurricanes they had seen. It passed northeast of Bermuda and curved east. On 21 September the German sailing ship Pamir met the storm southwest of the Azores and sank, with 80 of its 86 crew lost. Carrie then struck the British Isles with high winds on 24 and 25 September. The Weather Bureau estimated its track at about 6,000 miles, probably the longest on record.

Bertha, Debbie and Esther

Tropical Storm Bertha came ashore near Cameron late on 9 August, two months after Audrey, and residents evacuated promptly. Winds reached 50 to 70 mph, tides 4.7 feet at the west end of Vermilion Bay, and rain 10.73 inches at Livingston, Texas. Two deaths were reported.

Debbie barely reached storm strength before coming ashore near Fort Walton on 8 September; it caused no direct deaths but was blamed indirectly for four. Esther, a broad storm with a light-wind centre about 100 miles across, moved inland in southeastern Louisiana at daybreak on 18 September. Buras recorded 5 inches of rain in two and a half hours and more than 13 in all. The Weather Bureau charged Esther with $1,500,000 in damage and three deaths.

Hurricane Frieda grew from a frontal wave south-southwest of Bermuda and held hurricane force only a few hours on 25 September before turning extratropical. An unnamed October storm passed just east of Bermuda and closed the archive's record on 27 October.