Hurricane Havoc! Part 2

Camille was the second really big storm of my childhood in southern Louisiana. She came in August of 1969 as the largest tropical cyclone of that season and the second of three category 5 storms to make landfall in the US in the 20Th century. Camille was and Atlantic hurricane and the first to have reported winds of 190 mph. She made land fall near the mouth of the Mississippi on August 17Th and she did so after a
dump along the edge of Cuba as a category 3.

Camille wiped out almost everything along the entire gulf coast of Mississippi. Bay St. Louis, Mississippi is less than an hour drive from where I grew up in New Orleans. Man it was something to see the piles of debris scattered everywhere that a few days before had been big beautiful gulf coast mansions. There were large boats push way on shore, some left sitting inside what used to be homes and businesses. The storm surge was 24 feet at it's peak and the damage tally was 1.42 billion dollars. The damage total was very close to what Betsy got her nickname for, but the death toll was much higher at 259 people dead. This storm crushed the coast and then ran north causing problems across the Appalachians and on into the rest of Virginia.

I hear all kinds of stories on TV about how the storms are getting so much stronger and bigger, how global warming is making it worse. Camille, 190 mph winds, 24 foot surge, 259 dead, I am no meteorologist, but I believe there have always been cycles where we have a series of strong storms and then a period of lessor ones. The media today is much different than it was then, with so much coverage blasted worldwide. The Internet and The Weather Channel do report facts, but in some cases they do it with much drama. I guess the good thing is that government is being held much more accountable for protecting the communities that are at risk.

This storm struck the coast about 3 weeks after my eighth birthday and I remember it well, but I have seen several since then and I expect I will see several more.