Hurricane Hazel

October 1954. Dwight Eisenhower was president. The Cold War was raging. And television is just beginning. Actually, most households didn't even have a TV, and that meant no access to televised weather reports.

When hurricanes form, they build up strength when traveling over water and then weaken once they hit landfall. But Hurricane Hazel was an exception and it spread farther inland than any other hurricane in recorded history.

The Formation of Hurricane Hazel

Hurricane hunter planes discovered a tropical storm on the afternoon of October 5, 1954, approximately 50 miles east of Grenada in the Windward Islands. They named the storm Hazel. By the end of the day, the storm gained strength and it was upgraded to hurricane status.

Hurricane Hazel headed westward and hovered a few hundred miles from the Venezuela coast. At this point, the wind speed was calculated to be 132.5 mph. On October 9th, Hazel turned to the northeast, and the storm escalated to a Category 4 hurricane.

Hurricane Hazel Hits the Carolinas

At 11:00a.m. on October 14, 1954, Hurricane Hazel made landfall at the border of North and South Carolina as a Category 4 hurricane. The areas most affected stretched from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, to Topsail, North Carolina.

The storm surge from Hurricane Hazel ranged from 14 to 18 feet high, and it was worsened by the fact that this was the period where it was the highest lunar tide of the year. Beaches and coastal towns were destroyed by severe winds, flooding and heavy rainfall.

In the Carolinas, there were 19 deaths and more than 39,000 buildings were damaged and an additional 15,000 buildings destroyed. The estimated property damage was 136 million (1954 prices).

Hurricane Hazel left a path of destruction in Grenada, Haiti, Bahamas, South and North Carolina, Virginia, West Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York and Toronto.

According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), Hazel was responsible for 95 deaths and $281 million in damage in the United States, 100 deaths and $100 million in damage in Canada, and an estimated 400 to 1000 deaths in Haiti.

In this episode of Storm Stories, we will show you those who battled Hurricane Hazel first hand.

Jerry and Connie Helms were spending their honeymoon on the North Carolina coast when Hurricane Hazel hit. The couple was caught completely off guard and wound up using a mattress as a life raft...all the while battling 30 foot waves.