Hurricane Dora
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- This article is about the 1964 hurricane; there was also a Tropical Storm Dora during the 1956 Atlantic hurricane season.
Hurricane Dora was the first hurricane to make landfall on the coast of northeast Florida; more specifically, the metropolitan area of Jacksonville. Before it came ashore at St. Johns County just after midnight on September 10, 1964, no hurricane had made landfall there since record-keeping began in 1851.
Dora originated as a low pressure area near Cape Verde on August 28. On September 2, the storm had quickly strengthened into a hurricane. In the week before landfall, movement slowed and the winds and seas gained intensity. On the night of September 9, the eye passed over St. Augustine, with winds reported at 110 miles per hour at landfall, making the storm a very strong Category 2. As a result, the power supply for Jacksonville and surrounding towns was lost; it was only restored after six days of outages.
The storm cut a path across the northern part of the state before finally making a track to the northeast on September 12. As it moved into southwestern Georgia, Dora was downgraded to a tropical storm before eventually moving out into the Atlantic Ocean and dissipating entirely.
Dora caused only one death, but did about $280 million ($1.5 billion in 2000 dollars) in damage, primarily due to extensive inland flooding.
External link
- NHC 1964 Preliminary Report on Dora (ftp://ftp.nhc.noaa.gov/pub/storm_archives/atlantic/prelimat/atl1964/dora/)