The 1956 Atlantic hurricane season was a below-average Atlantic hurricane season that featured a low number of tropical cyclones, although every tropical storm and hurricane affected land. There were eight tropical storms, half of which became hurricanes. Two of the hurricanes strengthened to the equivalent of a major hurricane, which is a Category 3 or greater on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The strongest hurricane of the season was Greta, which was also the final storm of the year; it was an unusually large storm that produced high waves from Florida to the Lesser Antilles. The most damaging storm was Hurricane Betsy, which destroyed 15,000 houses and left $40 million in damage in Puerto Rico. Betsy was also the deadliest of the season, having killed 18 in the French West Indies, 2 from a shipwreck in the Caribbean Sea, and 16 in Puerto Rico. Tropical Storm Dora struck Mexico in September and killed 27 people.
The season officially started on June 15, although an unnamed storm developed three days prior in the Gulf of Mexico; the storm alleviated drought conditions in the south-central United States. Hurricane Anna developed in late July and hit Mexico. Tropical storms Carla and Ethel both formed near the Bahamas and moved northeastward until dissipating. The lone hurricane that hit the contiguous United States was Hurricane Flossy. It developed in the western Caribbean and moved across much of the southeastern United States, causing $24.8 million in damage and 15 deaths. There were also several tropical depressions, as well as one subtropical cyclone, in the season.
Read more about 1956 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Season Summary, Storm Names
Famous quotes containing the words atlantic, hurricane and/or season:
“We recognize caste in dogs because we rank ourselves by the familiar dog system, a ladderlike social arrangement wherein one individual outranks all others, the next outranks all but the first, and so on down the hierarchy. But the cat system is more like a wheel, with a high-ranking cat at the hub and the others arranged around the rim, all reluctantly acknowledging the superiority of the despot but not necessarily measuring themselves against one another.”
—Elizabeth Marshall Thomas. “Strong and Sensitive Cats,” Atlantic Monthly (July 1994)
“Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“The instincts of merry England lingered on here with exceptional vitality, and the symbolic customs which tradition has attached to each season of the year were yet a reality on Egdon. Indeed, the impulses of all such outlandish hamlets are pagan still: in these spots homage to nature, self-adoration, frantic gaieties, fragments of Teutonic rites to divinities whose names are forgotten, seem in some way or other to have survived mediaeval doctrine.”
—Thomas Hardy (1840–1928)