The most intense hurricane on record to exist in the Atlantic Basin duringJune was Audrey in 1957. The storm tracked northward through the western Gulfduring the last week of the month and slammed into the region along theTexas-Louisiana border. Sustained winds to 145 miles per hour were clocked atlandfall making it a Category 4 storm. No other Category 4 hurricane has beenobserved during the month of June.Hurricane Agnes and Tropical Storm Allison did not produce terrific winds andinundating storm surges; however, they both churned out excessive rainfall.
Agnes, after coming up the East Coast, looped back toward the west dumping morethan 6 inches of rain on a large part of the mid-Atlantic region. The resultwas extreme and very destructive flooding in New York state, Pennsylvania andthe Virginias. Hurricane Agnes remains the most costly June storm on recordproducing $3 billion (1972 USD) in damage.
Allison was a different sort of animal in that it never reached hurricaneintensity. More significantly, it took days for the storm to be picked up bythe prevailing westerlies, and for more than 48 hours, it looped around overeastern Texas. The result was a horrific amount of rain that caused some of theworst flooding ever for the region. At the port of Houston, Texas, a total of37 inches of rain fell during the three-day period. To put that intoperspective, the normal annual rainfall for Washington, D.C., is just 2 inchesmore than that.
Story by AccuWeather.com Senior Meteorologist John Kocet.
