1969 Pacific hurricane season

A late and quiet start

The site and the current best track agree on 10 tropical storms and 4 hurricanes. The archive also tracks four depressions and unnamed systems that never reached 34 kt, the first on 31 May. Accumulated cyclone energy came to 32.7, low for the basin. Tropical Storm Ava formed from convection off Guatemala and became a storm on 2 July; it was then the latest first named storm on record for the eastern Pacific.

Few ships crossed the waters where many of the storms formed, so forecasters relied on satellite pictures and Air Force reconnaissance. Most systems went straight to tropical storm advisories without a depression stage; only Ava, Bernice and Florence began as depressions in operational advisories.

Bernice and Doreen at sea

Hurricane Bernice formed on 9 July, reached hurricane strength on 12 July and weakened over the following days without touching land. At 192 recorded hours it was the longest-tracked storm of the year. Apollo 11 photographed Bernice on 16 July, and the storm also appeared in a television broadcast from the astronauts.

Hurricane Doreen grew from a cloud mass in the Intertropical Convergence Zone. A pinwheel of cirrus over its center on 4 August convinced forecasters it was a storm, and a ship reported 70 mph winds and 993 mb on 5 August, enough to call it a hurricane. It passed Socorro Island on 6 August before its eye broke up.

Floods before Emily

Tropical Storm Emily's parent low sat over Mexico on 20 and 21 August, setting off storms over the mainland. This precursor killed nine people and left 100,000 homeless in floods. Emily itself formed offshore on 22 August, showed a circular eye to reconnaissance on 23 August and fell apart by the next day with no reported damage.

September brought Florence, which reached 60 kt before cold water broke it down, and Hurricane Glenda, which formed southwest of Acapulco partly from the remains of Atlantic Hurricane Francelia. Glenda held hurricane strength only briefly, turned west short of Baja California, and has the lowest pressure in the archive for the season at 993 mb. Tropical Storm Heather looked like a hurricane on satellite with broad spiral arms, but cool inflow kept its official peak below that mark.

Jennifer at Mazatlán

Hurricane Jennifer formed in the convergence zone in early October after a German ship reported a sudden pressure fall to 995 mb. It reached hurricane strength on 9 October about 200 miles offshore, then turned northeast and sped toward the coast near Mazatlán. A reconnaissance plane, its dropsonde broken, estimated winds of about 55 mph as the storm neared the city. Jennifer moved inland late on 11 October and dissipated the next day.

Jennifer caused one death and 15 injuries in Mazatlán. A ferry and twelve shrimp boats washed up in the harbor, and more than 30 other shrimp boats went unaccounted for until they turned up moored elsewhere. Damage was described as extensive, but no monetary figure exists.

The season's names came from the 1960 to 1965 list 2, with Heather replacing the retired Hazel and used for the first time.