Hurricanes: Their Nature and Impacts on Society - Climate Science ...

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HURRICANES: THEIR NATURE AND IMPACT ON SOCIETY
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Figure 5.7 Tornado swarms associated with the l<strong>and</strong>fall of Hurricane Beulah in 1969.
Source: Texas Coastal <strong>and</strong> Marine Council (1974)
Particularly dangerous are tropical cyclones whose rainfall is initially light <strong>and</strong>
benign after l<strong>and</strong>fall only to erupt a couple of days later into torrential
downpours when the environment becomes favorable for the condensation
<strong>and</strong> precipitation of the large quantities of tropical moisture which have
moved inl<strong>and</strong> with the storm.
A particularly extreme example of such a system is Hurricane Camille of
1969. After killing 139 people along the Gulf coast on 17 August, the storm
rapidly weakened after moving inl<strong>and</strong> across Mississippi, into Tennessee <strong>and</strong>
Kentucky. There was relatively little concern by the National Weather Service
<strong>and</strong> certainly no hint of the tragedy that was to happen on the night of 19
August 1969 in central Virginia. The 24-hour <strong>and</strong> 12-hour precipitation forecasts
for the area, for example, which are shown in Figure 5.8, indicate that
only slightly more than 2 inches (50 millimeters) were expected. Figure 5.9
shows the actual observed deluge that occurred in one part of Virginia as the
remnants of Camille began to rejuvenate through interaction with a cold front
<strong>and</strong> when the moist tropical air was lifted by the mountains. The rainfall of