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• Hurricane hazel 4 full#

The areas that recorded the greatest rainfall amounts were all on the western side of the storm track, and many eastern locations received as little as one inch. Heavy rains fell from northeastern South Carolina to central North Carolina and Virginia.

Dozens of other cities and towns in the eastern half of the state faced similar losses. Many landed on cars, homes, and other structures, and power lines were left tangled and broken. In the city of Raleigh, it was reported that an average of two or three trees per block fell. In the aftermath of the storm, some sections of highway were littered with “hundreds of trees per mile.” Some were uprooted and tossed about, and others were snapped off ten to twenty feet above the ground. Hazel’s violent winds hacked or toppled countless trees across eastern North Carolina. Hazel’s storm tide may have been boosted several feet by the unfortunate timing of its approach. Local hunters refer to this as the “marsh hen tide,” a time when high waters tend to flush waterfowl out of the [protective cover of marsh grass.

Hurricane hazel 4 full#

Hazel’s surge was made worse by a matter of pure coincidence- it has struck at the exact time of the highest lunar tide of the year, the full moon of October. The flood reached eighteen feet above mean low water at Calabash. The storm surge that Hazel delivered to the southern beaches was the greatest in North Carolina’s recorded history. It was there that its most awesome forces were unleashed, although the destruction continued as the hurricane barreled across the state. Hazel’s ominous eye swept inland very near the North Carolina-South Carolina border. coastline near North Island, South Carolina. About the same time, the outer fringes of the storm first touched the U.S. The eye of the hurricane passed about ninety-five miles east of Charleston, South Carolina, at 8:00 A.M. During the early morning hours of October 12, the well-organized storm slammed into the Haitian coast, raking over both the southern and northern peninsulas. Hazel continued to draw energy from the warm Caribbean waters and intensified as it curved northward toward Haiti. Norton’s assistant issued timely warnings and made urgent phone calls to coastal officials as the storm approached the Carolinas. Following his death, the bureau did not skip a beat. Although he had been warned by his doctor to avoid the long hours, Norton had ignored his medical condition out of concern for the hurricane’s potential destruction. The Weather Bureau scrambled to pick up where Norton had left off, following the daily reports of the growing storm. Tragically, Norton suffered a stroke on the morning of October 9 and died later the same day.

Winds were clocked at 95 mph, and the small island of Carriacou was the first to suffer from Hazel’s winds and tides.Īt the weather Bureau’s Miami office, veteran chief forecaster Grady Norton was working twelve-hour days plotting Hazel’s course. On October 5, 1954, the small storm was identified just east of Grenada and was observed on west-northwest track that would take it through the Grenadines. Hazel (October 15, 1954) Hazel began, like many other hurricanes, as a trough of low pressure over the warm waters of the tropical Atlantic Ocean.