AIR Currents

Every now and then, a tropical storm more powerful than any other on record jumps into the record books, bumping all other storms down one rank. But did you know that a storm can also be demoted? This just happened to Hurricane Camille, a storm that destroyed part of the Gulf Coast more than 40 years ago.

Camille's landfalling intensity has long been rated at 190 mph-second in global ranking only to last year's Super Typhoon Haiyan and the highest on record for an Atlantic hurricane. However, recent reanalysis of the data by the National Hurricane Center has downgraded the storm's intensity to 175 mph. The Great Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 is now the strongest landfalling hurricane in U.S. history. Read more about hurricane reanalysis in this In Focus blog post.