The 1985 'cane season

[HalloweenGale]

What are some of your memories of this season?

[Guest]

Uhh, it was 19 years ago. I could hardly remember last week.

[HalloweenGale]

Well I flew into every hurricane of the'85 season in the atlantic

[Ola]

Well I flew into every hurricane of the'85 season in the atlantic

You are the guy that goes into Hurricane eyes wtih a laptop connected to the internet through a .............................. hmmm

Can you explain how you connect to the internet while flying your own C=130 ? Kind of hard to believe

[Stratosphere747]

There were laptops and the internet back in 85...Damn I would have done alot better in school if I had known that...

[Kennethb]

I was fortunate to ride out Elena in Ocean Springs Mississippi, in the NE eye wall. What an experience.

Also we had Juan here in Louisiana, a late October hurricane. It hung around for several days and produced the highest surges for many areas of southeast LA.

Too we had Danny in early August.

[Stormsfury]

I was fortunate to ride out Elena in Ocean Springs Mississippi, in the NE eye wall. What an experience.

Also we had Juan here in Louisiana, a late October hurricane. It hung around for several days and produced the highest surges for many areas of southeast LA.

Too we had Danny in early August.

I remember watching Elena make its odd track in the GOM, and also, remember paying VERY close attention to Hurricane Gloria, especially when it was packing 150 mph winds and apparently (at that time) eyeing the Carolinas ...

We had one tropical system, Hurricane Bob (Cat. 1) make landfall on Fripp Island, SC (pk gust there was 92 mph) (I was at summer camp in Hampton, SC on the last day) ... the next morning we returned home to Charleston, and things weren't too awfully bad ... quite a few trees, and some minor damage, but nothing major.

A weakening tropical storm (depression by the time it brushed the Carolina coast ... Isabel ... passes through without much fanfare).

And we received substantial rainfalls from Tropical Storm Kate after it made landfall in Florida in late November ... along with winds up to 60 mph in the very intense squall on the eastern side. Once Kate got north of here, the winds died off and the rain was pretty much done (most all the weather on the N and E side of the system)

SF

[rockyman]

I was in Mobile during this memorable season...but I just a still a kid...really, this season is what really made a hurricane nut...I remembered Frederic (blew down my school, torn down part of my house)...but I was way too young to "track" Fred

Danny first caught my attention (because that' my nickname)

Then Elena...I tracked it from a "tropical wave" (first time I ever heard that term) east of the Island...I remember boarding up the windows and then watching everyone else "unboard" their windows when Elena turned toward Tampa...I assured my parents that "she'd be back" and that we shouldn't untape the windows quite yet...Much to my own surprise, I was right! I remember watching lawn chairs blow down Airport Blvd in Mobile while my parents and I sat at the Bombay Bicycle Club eating nachos.

Juan formed while my parents and I were on "vacation" in Gulf Shores...We hadn't been there a day when my older sisters called us at the hotel and told us about something brewing south of Louisiana...The hotel parking lot began flooding the next morning and we "evacuated" to Montgomery.

Kate--We didn't even get out of school for this one...I remember the winds howling in from the north (we were on the west side of the system)...and it was absolutely FREEZING (it was November after all).

Anyway...there's my 2 cents...that was quite a year!

[Air Force Met]

It was the first season I really paid attention to. Danny...Elena...Gloria and Jaun especially.

I remember the size of Jaun...which while sitting in the gulf had a cloud shield all the way up into Canada. I also remember it raining and windy at my house...but pretty cool...as it was more subtropical by this point. The temp was in the mid 60's.

[Anonymous]

yeaugh I remember being "glued" to the TV set when Elena was nearly stationary in the NE GOM. I thought it would hit us and move NE, but that was just wishful thinking. Eventually a trough kicked it east, then all-of-a-sudden it looped west as a big high moved into the East.

Still quite exciting.

[Brent]

It was 3 years before I was born. My parents weren't even together yet in 1985.

[Guest]

I remember Kate which skirted the north coast of Cuba in Nov & caused some gusty winds up here.There was a hurricane warning or watch issued here if my memory is correct but nothing significant happened as she remained well to the south.I also remember Elena's wild ride in the Gulf.

[Anonymous]

Kate was another odd ball ! I remember running to Trident Tech College that morning (in the parking lot) in heavy rain and gusts to 50mph - I should've cut class that day and watch the storm - but because I already missed too many days, I couldn't. I was afraid my dad would find out I've been dropped since he paid for that class. So in the classroom I would just think about the weather action outside and draw maps of the storms future movement

[therock1811]

I was born in August that year (b-day really soon now ) and it was WAY before my interest in wx got going...so I don't remember anything...

[Anonymous]

I remember Kate which skirted the north coast of Cuba in Nov & caused some gusty winds up here.There was a hurricane warning or watch issued here if my memory is correct but nothing significant happened as she remained well to the south.I also remember Elena's wild ride in the Gulf.

Yup, that storm had us scrambling to more steardy structure in the middle of the night in Lenox, Ga. One of the wildest weather memories I have

[BayouVenteux]

In my younger days, I didn't pay much attention to the weather except for what was in front of me. But Juan in '85 was one of those events that made me as weather-conscious as I am today. I remember Juan as a late October suprise. It was a gray overcast Sunday, and my wife and I were going with some friends down to New Orleans for the day to do brunch at Commander's Palace and suffer through the Saints/Giants game that afternoon. We took off a little late as usual and my buddy who was doing the driving, well let's just say he was overcompensating for the delay. We made it down the road past La Place and just on to the opening stretch of 12 Mile Bridge, which is where I-10 hugs the SW shore of Lake Pontchartrain, in about 35 minutes. We were making good time when the flashing lights came on behind us. State Trooper. Thought we where going to get read the riot act, because he clocked us doing 85 in a 55. Not today! He showed restraint and voiced concern, telling us that we needed to slow it down and be extra careful because it was, as he put it, " kinda rough up ahead." Great! We all smiled, certain this was going to be a good day after all. Not 2 minutes later, we come around the curve where the road is right over the lake edge and WHOA!!! The lake looked like the North Sea. So many whitecaps were breaking that the water resembled a meringue topping. The spray was blowing up over the highway, so even though it wasn't raining, you had to have the windshield wipers going full tilt to see. Needless to say, the traffic slowed to a crawl due to the high wind (if I had to guess based on what I know now from experience, it was probably only on the order of 40-45 mph sustained at that time, but for just happening upon it with no knowledge of a storm brewing, it was an eye opener.

We quickly put the trip down behind us and the day went pretty much as expected after we made it downtown. Great food, Saints lost. The game was over by midway through the 4th quarter, when the 'dome's PA announcer came on to recommend that if people wanted to leave early, it would be advisable due to the deteriorating weather conditions caused by newly formed Hurricane Juan. Huh? We didn't know about any storm. We decided to wait the now departing crowd out and stay until the end of the game. After all, we were parked on one of the side streets and traffic was going to be bad anyway. Well, the game ended. The crowd was filing out en masse, but VERY slowly. We waited. Crowd is still in the dome. Wait some more. An hour and a half after the final play and the crowd STILL hasn't left. Hmmm, we better go check out what the problem is. We wind our way through the throngs of people and make it to one of the main exits, where everyone is standing, sitting, waiting. We finally manage to get a look outside the opened exit doorway, to see the wind blowing and rain coming down hard, in sheets so thick it's like a fog. The outdoor Superdome parking lots and adjacent side streets were under anywhere from 8-12 inches of water.

Long story made shorter, after a 2 hour wait, we said "shoes be damned, we're going home!" and waded through the water to our car, which, thankfully, was parked on a side street that had somewhat better drainage. After an excruciatingly slow journey back up to Baton Rouge, we arrived home at a quarter after eleven that night. All in all, not too shabby a performance from a minimal category 1. Needless to say, after Juan, I started paying much closer attention to the weather.

[CajunMama]

Great food, Saints lost.

Saints lost???? Imagine that

[HalloweenGale]

Well I flew into every hurricane of the'85 season in the atlantic

You are the guy that goes into Hurricane eyes wtih a laptop connected to the internet through a .............................. hmmm

Can you explain how you connect to the internet while flying your own C=130 ? Kind of hard to believe

I was a hurricane hunter in '85.

second, its not really a laptop, its a new IMAC, with an airport, the airport is the wireless connection.

[tallywx]

Hurricane Kate was the "big one" for Tallahassee, just because we haven't been hit by anything larger since the 1800s. Kate had a vicious east side that hit northern Tallahassee square on. I was only 2 years old at the time, but I remember the experience vividly. As with most two year olds, I hated eating peas. Well, the evening before the hurricane hit (the full force blasted through Tallahassee around 11 p.m.), my mother told me that if I "didn't eat peas, a hurricane was going to hit." Just as I refused the peas, the lights started flickering. I got the message! A few hours later, the wind was really howling. I remember walking around in complete darkness, scared to death, hearing the howl of the wind outside. What scared me the most were the gusts, because you'd hear this high-pitched whistling that sounded like a banchee.

The day after was a complete mess. Winds, which at the Tallahassee airport on the south side of town only gusted to 68 mph, gusted between 85-90 mph around my neighborhood, as measured by amateur weather observers. In my yard alone, eight large trees had been uprooted. About 1/4 of the shingles had been blown off of our roof. We were able to find most of the shingles, some of which were up to 1000 feet away from the source.

Our electricity was out for only four days (being in an upscale and populated neighborhood, we were given priority). Other areas of town were without electricity for two weeks!

What's sad is that most people in Tallahassee consider Kate as the benchmark of what hurricanes can do, when in reality it was a gusty category 1 at best when it passed through (at best on the same level as what Hatteras experienced from Alex). We'll be in for a rude awakening one of these days...

[Andrew92]

I was just one year old in 1985 and don't remember it.

I hope I'm not getting off-topic when I say this, but I can help but notice that 1985, with 6 landfalls, came shortly after a period of back-to-back years with no landfalling hurricanes: 1981 and 1982. The only other time this happened, 1930 and 1931, saw 1933 see about 5 hurricane landfalls.

Will we see another '85 like year this year or soon? We're still not long out of 2000 and 2001.....the most recent two consecutive years with no hurricane landfalls.

-Andrew92