From the editor: One of the most powerful storms to ever hit the U.S., 1967's Hurricane Beulah was nearly a direct Brownsville, S.P.I. hit, destroying most of what was then on the island, ripping off hundreds of roofs in Brownsville, with massive flooding and electricity off in town exactly a week and a day.
Beulah was a huge storm in actual size, more so than wind velocity, although allegedly breaking the anemometer at the Brownsville Airport at 161 M.P.H., killing 58, while spawning 115 tornadoes.
The storm traveled all the way across country to New England, reduced to a tropical storm, then once out at sea again, regathered itself into a hurricane.
The year before, 1966, I'd ordered a hurricane map and plotted the coordinates of Hurricane Inez, also taking aim squarely at our city, but, at the last instant, veering south to strike Tampico.
Hurricane Beryl seems to be taking that similar, familiar path, but high pressure pushing from the north usually determines the eventual landing spot.
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| Hurricane Beryl 2024 |
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| Hurricane Beulah 1967 |
More Photos from Beulah 1967:
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Where did you get that figure of 161 mph? The stories I heard, and I watched it on the weather radar at the airport as it begin moving ashore, was 127 mph. I have never heard the 161 number before. As a Red Cross volunteer I was all over town in the days following the storm and though there was plenty of wind damage and, admittedly at the time I had no real way of judging the wind during or after the storm, I don't believe I saw damage to the extent that would have occurred with the more powerful wind. I do remember my bedroom window glass flexing and making an eerie high-pitched sound. Anyway, I'd really like to know where that number came from.
ReplyDeleteThe map at the top of the screen, from the NWS Brownsville, from the 50th anniversary of Beulah in 2017, also says 161 MPH. That was the report I heard 57 years ago, that the anemometer at the airport had broken at 161 MPH. There's even a pic of that somewhere.
DeleteThank you for responding. It led me to do a little research and the storm apparently made it to Category 5 status briefly somewhere out in the Gulf but it came ashore as a Category 3 storm which is a storm with winds between 111 mph and 129 mph. I believe this to be an accurate representation of the event.
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