June Hurricanes

Although hurricane season began June 1, tropical storms are relatively rare during the month of June as the peak of the season doesn’t come until early September.  June hurricanes are rarer still, though, not unheard of.  Every few years a tropical storm develops early in the season and on occasion they intensify into a hurricane.  Hurricane Agnes was an infamous, though minimal, hurricane when it made landfall in June 1972. 

 

However, the majority of the damage from Agnes came from the flooding its remnants caused in the Mid-Atlantic and Northeastern United States.  Allison was a minimal, Category 1 hurricane that also developed in June and impacted the U.S. Gulf Coast in 1995.  But the strongest, most destructive tropical system to make landfall in the United States during the month of June came in 1957. 

Hurricane Audrey intensified into a Category 4 hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 145 mph when it made landfall along the Texas/Louisiana border.  Weather satellites were still a few years away so the storm and its intensity came as a major surprise among residents along the U.S. Gulf Coast.  It caused unspeakable devastation in its path virtually unheard of during the month June with an estimated $1.1 billion in damage (adjusted for inflation to 2008 figures) and claimed 416 lives.

Audrey was also the deadliest hurricane to make landfall in the United States until Katrina in 2005.  Audrey would hold the record for strongest storm to form before August until Hurricanes Dennis and Emily grew even stronger in July 2005.  Nevertheless, Audrey remains the strongest June hurricane on record.