New Orleans and Hurricane Betsy: 1965

[Zomby Woof]

Thought you all might find this interesting: In September of 1965, Hurricane Betsy, a Category 3, hit New Orleans and caused Lake Pontchartrain to pour over the levee and flood the city.

It was one of the costliest storms in our history, and something of a prelude to this week's catastrophe.

Link here:

http://www.usatoday.com/weather/resources/askjack/2003-10-09-hurricane-betsy_x.htm

Excerpt:

The hurricane you are thinking of was Betsy, which not only hit New Orleans with winds of at least 125 mph, but also flooded large parts of the city.

All of this happened after Betsy did considerable damage in the Bahamas and southern Florida, including the Keys.

When all of the damage in the USA was totaled, it came to more than $1 billion in 1965 dollars, making Betsy the USA's first billion dollar hurricane. If you factor in inflation and put Betsy's cost into Year 2000 dollars, it cost $8.4 billion, which ties it for third in the list of the nation's most expensive hurricanes. Betsy is tied with Agnes, which caused major flooding in the Northeast in 1972, and behind only Hugo in 1989 and Andrew in 1992 in cost.

Betsy was blamed for 75 deaths in the USA, which ranks it 18th among the deadliest U.S. storms from 1900 through at least September 2003. The only storm to kill more people in the USA since 1965 was Camille, with 256 deaths in 1969.

Camille, by the way, came close to hitting New Orleans, but instead, the city felt the fringes of Camille's weather side when its eye came ashore about 60 miles to the east in Mississippi.

In addition to the people it killed and the damage it did, Betsy is famous for doing a loop the loop when it was about 350 miles east of Daytona Beach, Fla. and seemed to be on its way to hit the Carolinas.

Instead, it turned back to toward the southwest, passing over the Bahamas where winds on Great Abaco Island reached 147 mph. Soon after the eye moved over Nassau, the biggest city in the Bahamas, Betsy stalled for about three hours, allowing its winds to pound the city.

On Sept. 7 Betsy continued moving toward the southwest to pass over Key Largo at the eastern end of the Florida Keys, and then continued west along the Keys.

As Betsy continued across the Gulf of Mexico and turned toward the northwest, it grew into a category 4 storm with winds up to 155 mph.

As the hurricane moved ashore south of New Orleans it destroyed almost every building in Grand Isle, where the Coast Guard station reported gusts up to 160 mph.

Winds up to 125 mph were measured in New Orleans.

Betsy drove storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain, which is just north of the city and is connected to the Gulf of Mexico, pushing water over levees around the lake. Flood water reaches the eves of houses in some places in the city.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web site notes that "Betsy prompted Congress to authorize a ring of levees 16 feet high around the city — a project the Corps of Engineers is completing today. This level of protection was based on the science of storm prediction as it existed in the 1960s. The question remains, however, whether this level of protection would be sufficient to protect the city from a category 4 or 5 hurricane today — or even a category 3 storm that lingered over the city."

[redsoxliberal]

1. storm surge from Katrina was that of a strong cat 5

that is the difference here... Betsy had a worst case scenario track... but was a much smaller storm... NO was in the eyewall for less time... much smaller storm surge.

The storm surge does not weaken with the wind. The pressure is the first thing to change, then the winds, then, much later, the storm surge.
The storm surge with this storm was the largest ever... and that is certainly adding to the NO.LA flooding, making it far worse than Betsy.

[Zomby Woof]

2. I didn't say Betsy was the same

But it is interesting that for its time, it was huge, and prompted what proved to be an inadequate response to dealing with the enormity of Katrina. I think it's a cautionary tale.

[Zomby Woof]

3. .

[miss_kitty]

4. when I stayed in NOLA

the people I was staying with on St Roch lived next door to a house with a high water mark and the word 'Betsy' just above the mark somewhere on the second story. That was in 1990.

[Zomby Woof]

5. Kind of eerie, eh?

No doubt that Katrina is of a much larger and a more severe scale, but Betsy was a major event in its own right. I am sure some of the city elders have colorful stories to tell.

I have never been to New Orleans, but always wanted to. Cities with that much character are to be appreciated.

[miss_kitty]

6. It was bitchin'

I was there 3 weeks in July 1990 and lost 25 lbs, it was so hot. I'm sure that neighbourhood is well drowned. It was close to the French Quarter, very low lying and in the 6th ward, IIRC, a very poor part of town with very old live oaks down the center of the road. It was a double shotgun house, and the people on the other side were hoarders-newspapers and garbage.

I remember standing near a levee along the river and looking way up at the hull of a container ship.

The guy who lived in the house I was staying in was a seventh generation Filipino New Orleans native, his dad was the only employee killed during the building of the Superdome. His Gran and Great gran lived in two houses across the street. His Great gran had been a little girl when some mega hurricane had roared through NOLA in the earliest part of the 20th century. The sepia toned photos she had of herself wearing a spotless white dress, standing in the midst of the destruction were mind-boggling, to say the least.

The folks with the watermarked house were up there in age, and were moving to Slidell or Metarie.

My friend who I was visiting moved out of NOLA in the mid 90s and back to California.