The Hurricane Too Strong to Be Measured — Camille 1969

At about 11:15 on the night of August 17th, 1969, a boat dealer in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, wrote down the reading that became Hurricane Camille's official landfall pressure. No instrument ever recorded the storm's worst winds. This is the story of the Category 5 hurricane that struck the Mississippi Gulf Coast in 1969. It covers the reconnaissance reading that disappeared from the record, the 24.6-foot storm tide at Pass Christian, the survivor accounts that contradict the Richelieu Apartments hurricane party legend, and the flash floods that caught families asleep in Nelson County, Virginia, two days later. For 36 years, Camille was the storm the coast measured every other storm against. In 2005, as Hurricane Katrina approached, some families in Hancock County stayed home because they didn't get water in Camille. Sources include the National Weather Service; Kieper, Landsea and Beven, "A Reanalysis of Hurricane Camille," Bulletin of the American Meteorological Society (2016); Encyclopedia Virginia; and the Mississippi Free Press.