Answers: Hurricane Betsy hit Florida, smashed New Orleans in 1965
By Jack Williams, USATODAY.com
Q: In late August or the first part of September 1965 a hurricane came ashore
and did considerable damage to New Orleans. Please tell me the name of this
hurricane and other details you may have on it. Thank you.

Flooding left by Hurricane Betsy in New Orleans in 1965.
NOAA

A: The hurricane you are thinking of was Betsy, which not only hit New Orleans
with winds of at least 125 mph, but also flooded large parts of the city.

All of this happened after Betsy did considerable damage in the Bahamas and
southern Florida, including the Keys.

When all of the damage in the USA was totaled, it came to more than $1 billion
in 1965 dollars, making Betsy the USA's first billion dollar hurricane. If you
factor in inflation and put Betsy's cost into Year 2000 dollars, it cost $8.4
billion, which ties it for third in the list of the nation's most expensive
hurricanes. Betsy is tied with Agnes, which caused major flooding in the
Northeast in 1972, and behind only Hugo in 1989 and Andrew in 1992 in cost.

Betsy was blamed for 75 deaths in the USA, which ranks it 18th among the
deadliest U.S. storms from 1900 through at least September 2003. The only storm
to kill more people in the USA since 1965 was Camille, with 256 deaths in 1969.

Camille, by the way, came close to hitting New Orleans, but instead, the city
felt the fringes of Camille's weather side when its eye came ashore about 60
miles to the east in Mississippi.

In addition to the people it killed and the damage it did, Betsy is famous for
doing a loop the loop when it was about 350 miles east of Daytona Beach, Fla.
and seemed to be on its way to hit the Carolinas.

Instead, it turned back to toward the southwest, passing over the Bahamas where
winds on Great Abaco Island reached 147 mph. Soon after the eye moved over
Nassau, the biggest city in the Bahamas, Betsy stalled for about three hours,
allowing its winds to pound the city.

On Sept. 7 Betsy continued moving toward the southwest to pass over Key Largo at
the eastern end of the Florida Keys, and then continued west along the Keys.

As Betsy continued across the Gulf of Mexico and turned toward the northwest, it
grew into a category 4 storm with winds up to 155 mph.

As the hurricane moved ashore south of New Orleans it destroyed almost every
building in Grand Isle, where the Coast Guard station reported gusts up to 160
mph.

Winds up to 125 mph were measured in New Orleans.

Betsy drove storm surge into Lake Pontchartrain, which is just north of the city
and is connected to the Gulf of Mexico, pushing water over levees around the
lake. Flood water reaches the eves of houses in some places in the city.

A U.S. Army Corps of Engineers Web site notes that "Betsy prompted Congress to
authorize a ring of levees 16 feet high around the city — a project the Corps of
Engineers is completing today. This level of protection was based on the science
of storm prediction as it existed in the 1960s. The question remains, however,
whether this level of protection would be sufficient to protect the city from a
category 4 or 5 hurricane today — or even a category 3 storm that lingered over
the city." (Related: 'Big Easy' a bowl of trouble in hurricanes)