Tomorrow will be the 50th anniversary of Hurricane Audrey making landfall. Up until the 2005 season, Hurricane Audrey was the benchmark storm for Southwest Louisiana, but a lot of folks of late claim that Hurricane Rita surpassed the ferocity of Audrey. Don Menard, author of “Hurricanes of the Past: The Untold Story of Hurricane Audrey”, will be releasing a second edition of his book tomorrow. He sent me a letter a few weeks back including a column he had written for the Cameron newspaper, the Cameron Pilot. Don presents some excellent points on how Audrey was likely stronger than recognized by the National Hurricane Center, but the main gist of his story compares Audrey with Rita. Most of us certainly consider Rita and Katrina as the new benchmark storms for our generation, supplanting Audrey and Camille, but Don makes some valid points about the magnitude of Audrey’s surge. Comparing Audrey and Rita’s surges yield quite similar inundation. In fact Rita’s high water marks penetrated farther inland than Audrey. But that doesn’t tell the whole story…remember, over the last 50 years we have witnessed much coastal erosion along our shores. According to Don, back in the 1950s, some portions of the Intracoastal Waterway had levees up to 20ft which helped block some of Audrey’s surge. Today there isn’t anything more than 6ft elevation along the coastal waterway from years of erosion, manmade and natural. Rita was a large and intense Category 5 storm the day before landfall, and although considered a Category 3 at landfall, the surge was more like a 4…and most of the worst inundation followed the storm and was more like a secondary surge produced by the tropical storm force winds from the south that lasted for 18-24 hours after Rita made landfall. So there was likely less impeding Rita’s surge inland, and much less now for future storms, post Rita. Rita eased along the coast at 13 mph and came in at an angle where the initial surge rose on the order of 5 feet per hour for a couple of hours across coastal Cameron Parish. Audrey came in “normal” to the coast, on a right angle, which maximized the intensity of the surge and likely rose faster than Rita’s. In addition, large 50 foot waves generated by Audrey just piled into the coast with the storm as it was moving rapidly at 30mph. This likely generated an incredible current with the surge. It still amazes me that there were any survivors.
Audrey also likely produced higher sustained winds and wind gusts especially farther east of landfall where wind gusts to 86 mph were recorded in Lafayette. In addition, wind gusts over 100mph were reported through Monroe, with gusts in excess of hurricane force all the way up through Western New York and Canada as Audrey became extratropical.
The real tragedy with Audrey was the high loss of life due to the lack of solid meteorological information disseminated at the time. This was a time years before there were satellites in space, and before radar was operational at the National Weather Service in Lake Charles (then called the Weather Bureau). Over the years, I have heard stories of how the storm was downplayed by the government and the local media the night before landfall, but I have no evidence to substantiate that. It could just have been what I have seen many times, there is a change, it’s a major change, and there is little time to react. Audrey was a lesson on how a storm that was drifting north, due east of Brownsville, earlier in the day on the 26th, accelerated to 30-35mph that night, pushing the Gulf of Mexico inland by 100am that night. Folks that thought they could leave the next morning didn’t have a chance. Donavan Landreneau and Sam Shamburger with the National Weather Service in Lake Charles have for the first time, pieced together Air Force radars that logged information in Houston and Alexandria and have reconstructed Audrey’s storm surge. Check out their page. Tomorrow there will be a ceremony remembering Audrey at the Cameron Courthouse Square at 10am. It is open to the public. KATC will be there and we’ll have a full report on our newscasts tomorrow evening.