By Ashley Williams, AccuWeather staff writer
June 27,2017, 2:27:29PM,EDT
Hurricane Audrey’s latest movements were fresh on the minds of families in Cameron, Louisiana, before bedtime on June 26, 1957.
Broadcasters announced that the storm, which had strengthened into a hurricane in the Gulf of Mexico the day before, would make landfall over the Texas and Louisiana border late the next day.“A lot of people thought it was too early to have a major hurricane, so I think forecasters might not have taken it seriously,” said Bill Murray, president and weather historian for The Weather Factory.
“Of course, we didn’t have the tools 60 years ago either,” he said.
In a time before satellites, meteorologists relied on aircraft reconnaissance, ship reports and minimal radar to monitor the storm’s whereabouts.
The United States Weather Bureau’s 10 p.m. report placed Audrey at about 235 miles south of Lake Charles, a Louisiana town 52 miles inland.
The advisory warned that those living in low exposed areas should move to higher ground as the storm crept northward toward the coast at 10 mph.
Assuming that they had ample time to escape Audrey’s impact, Cameron residents had packed their vehicles in preparation for an early morning evacuation.
In its final six hours before landfall, a strong upper-level trough helped the intensifying hurricane rapidly accelerate as it barreled toward the southern U.S.
A trough is an elongated area of relatively low atmospheric pressure, according to the National Weather Service (NWS).
“It caught the Weather Bureau by surprise, to some degree,” said Murray.
Weather Bureau forecasters in Lake Charles released a 1 a.m. update on June 27, stating that Audrey’s speed had increased to up to 20 mph with 150-mph winds.
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By that time, however, broadcasters had gone off the air and residents of Vermilion, Iberia and Cameron parishes were fast asleep.
Audrey pounded the southern United States coast and destroyed coastal communities with intense winds and flooding.
“People woke up around 4 or 5 o’clock in the morning with 6 feet of water coming into their houses,” said Murray.
About 1,000 people made it safely into Cameron’s three-story courthouse, said Murray, in which the first two floors were inundated.
However, those unable to escape the powerful hurricane drowned in Gulf waters pushed inland by an unexpected storm surge of at least 12 feet.
In 2016, as part of the ongoing Atlantic Hurricane Database Re-analysis Project, the National Hurricane Center (NHC) reassessed and downgraded Audrey from a Category 4 to a 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.
The NHC determined that upon landfall, Audrey’s maximum sustained surface winds were 125 mph.
Audrey, the strongest hurricane ever recorded in the month of June, killed at least 500 people and caused an estimated $150 million in damage in the U.S.
It is the seventh-deadliest hurricane in modern history, according to the NWS.
The storm’s impact and intense storm surge were felt as far as 25 miles inland in southwestern Louisiana.
Many victims, nine of whom died in southeastern Texas, were never found.
Some survivors, including Whitney Bartie, sued the Weather Bureau for failing to provide enough warning.
Bartie lost his wife and five children when Aubrey battered Cameron Parish with severe storm surge.
The Weather Bureau was ultimately found to be not negligent.
According to the NWS, no reliable wind or pressure measurements are available from Audrey’s center at landfall.
Meteorological developments, including advancements in computer modeling, have vastly improved in the 60 years since Audrey’s devastation.
“They didn’t have the advantages that we have today of non-stop social media, non-stop coverage of satellite and radar every minute or two,” said Kirk.
“Doppler radars can go out 250 miles, so we’re not going to be surprised. In 1957, they didn’t have radar, really, and they couldn’t see [Audrey] speeding up,” he said.
Mike Smith ·
Fortunately, with today's warning system, a repeat of Audrey is nearly impossible.
Thomas Glynn ·
I
was 9 years old when my folks woke me up telling me we had to make a
run for it. The old house was bouncing up and down on the piers. we made
it to my aunt's stucco home and rode it out there. What I remember was
the wind noise and the clouds flying by like a time lapse video
Linda Gouldin ·
Remember
this storm like it was yesterday. I was only 10 years old, turned 11
that August. It was the scariest thing I have ever been through. The
thing I remember most was the sound of the winds that would never go
away. And afterwards, the smell of death everywhere. We all had to go to
the clinics for shots. The eye of the storm passed right over Lake Charles
Larry LeFlore ·
Works at Retired
I
would have been 5 years old and living in New Orleans at that time. I
don't remember Audrey, but I remember Hazel and Betsy. The most
terrifying thing was that roar of wind that just never stops. Then the
smells.
Lola McGourty ·
I remember this but lived out of reach in Northern Louisiana.
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