Hurricane Audrey killed hundreds as one of June’s worst storms
Fifteen fatalities in Canada made this storm one of the deadliest in modern history
One of the most destructive hurricanes to hit the Gulf Coast struck the region right at the beginning of the season.
Hurricane Audrey rolled into southwestern Louisiana on the morning of June 27, 1957, with winds stronger than 200 km/h. Hundreds of people died in the storm, including more than a dozen fatalities in Canada.
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Storms that form early in the Atlantic hurricane season tend to develop close to land, often in the Gulf of Mexico or the Caribbean Sea.
Audrey followed in the footsteps of those classic early-season systems, blooming from a disturbance parked in the southern Gulf of Mexico.
This system began moving north into an environment very supportive of tropical development. Favourable winds and toasty sea surface temperatures helped Audrey rapidly intensify into a major hurricane as it approached the northern Gulf Coast.
Hurricane Audrey made landfall near Lake Charles, Louisiana, as a Category 3 storm with maximum sustained winds of 205 km/h. The storm continues to hold the title of the strongest early-season hurricane to ever make landfall in the Atlantic basin.
Powerful winds tore the roofs off homes and knocked down countless trees. But it was the storm surge that caused the most damage.
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Seawater pushed inland by the intense winds reached higher than 4 metres (14 feet) above ground level just east of where the eye made landfall. This unstoppable flood swept away many homes in this swampy, low-lying region, contributing to many of Hurricane Audrey’s 400 fatalities.
The storm weakened as it pushed inland, bringing up to 300 mm of rain as well as tornadoes to communities far away from the shoreline. Meteorologists watched the remnants of Audrey reintensify as a powerful non-tropical low as it approached Canada the following day.
Winds as high as 100 km/h and flooding rains swept into Ontario and Quebec as the former Audrey tracked through the region. One newspaper called it Quebec’s worst storm in 20 years. All told, the storm’s remnants killed 15 people in Canada, making it one of the country’s deadliest storms in modern times.