On this day, October 15, 1954, Hurricane Hazel made landfall in the Carolinas.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

I was around for Hurricane Hazel.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page

• 1954 – Hurricane Hazel (flooding pictured) made landfall in the Carolinas in the United States before moving north to Toronto in Canada later the same day, killing 176 people in the two countries.



Hurricane Hazel flooding

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/October_15

• 1954 – Hurricane Hazel devastates the eastern seaboard of North America, killing 95 and causing massive floods as far north as Toronto.

[no_hypocrisy]

1. I remember reading about Hurricane Hazel

in one of my Scholastic Books from the Sixties. "Hazel was here!" was written on a big plywood board. The photos showed devastation I had never seen before.

[Goonch]

2. I remember Hazel as a kid in Philly

[Dave in VA]

3. I had just turned two

when Hazel hit coastal Virginia, but as a kid growing up I can remember numerous times the adults talking about surviving the storm.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

6. I'm a year ahead of you. NT

[randr]

4. I was 7 in Wilmington Delaware

It passed right over us. I remember the eye was awesome, beautiful tropical birds flying about. Later we went down to the shore and found a piece of a pier from Cape May that ended up in Fenwick Island, which was devastated

[unc70]

7. I was in the middle of Hazel

I grew up on the south coast of NC, the part that sticks out. I was six. We were just NE of where the eye came in and received some of the worst of Hazel. Fierce winds, torrential rains, and a huge storm surge wiped out almost everything directly on the coast from Myrtle Beach northward for 100 miles. An island might have five houses left standing out of five hundred.

We were several miles inland and were spared the storm surge, but had other damage including the destruction of crops. Overall, still fairly lucky.

The damage was so severe along the coast and inland that Before/After Hazel became a primary way of measuring time in NC. The book and movie "Where the Crawdads Sing" is laughably wrong in so many ways, but none so egregious as its total omission of Hazel and other hurricanes. !!!

[luvs2sing]

8. My parents had been vacationing in Sarasota..

and were driving back to Ohio. Remember, there were no interstates, and Florida to Ohio took several days. They were a day ahead of it all the way back.