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Group aircraft found the storm had slowed but deepened rapidly. Maximum winds were estimated at 150 miles per hour near the center, which was located about 380 miles south of Ft. Walton.
At 7 pm Saturday, August 16, a bulletin identified hurricane CAMILLE as a “very intense and dangerous storm” and raised tide estimates to 12 feet. Later that evening CAMILLE resumed her north-northwest movement at about 12 miles per hour. She was generating winds of 160 miles per hour near her center with hurricane-force winds extending 50 miles in all directions.
On Sunday, August 17th, with “extremely dangerous” CAMILLE 250 miles south of Mobile, Alabama, Advisory Number Thirteen was issued at 5 am CDT extending hurricane warnings westward to Biloxi, Mississippi, and a hurricane watch was moved west to New Orleans and Grand Isle, Louisiana.
Weather Bureau staffs, maintaining an all-night vigil, alerted their communities, now affected by the watch and the warnings, and the tempo of preparation quickened.
Some residents along the Gulf Coast had already begun boarding up homes and businesses in the early hours of that Sunday morning, and a trickle of cars moved on the highways leading north as dawn approached.
Four hours later, at 9 am Sunday, with CAMILLE about 200 miles southeast of New Orleans, Advisory Number Fourteen issued warnings for all the Mississippi coast and the hurricane watch was changed to a warning as far west as New Orleans and Grand Isle. The advisory forecast hurricane-force winds from extreme northwest Florida to southeast Louisiana by late afternoon or early evening with tides up to 15 feet near the center. “Present indications are that the center of CAMILLE will pass close to the mouth of the Mississippi River late this afternoon and move inland on the Mississippi coast tonight.”
Preparations for the storm reached a crescendo. The stream of evacuees became a flood as the threat to the low-lying coastline became evident. People hastily loaded what few belongings they could carry with them and fled. Local officials appeared on radio and television stations to point out the danger and plead with those who were reluctant to abandon their
homes. Police and Civil Defense officials went through the areas of special hazard to contact individually those who thought they could “last it out.”
At 1 pm Sunday a bulletin issued from the Weather Bureau Forecast Center in New Orleans forecast the possibility of tornadoes associated with CAMILLE, but it was at 3 pm that the full extent of the danger was realized. Air Force reconnaissance reports early Sunday afternoon indicated a central pressure in CAMILLE of 26.61 inches, the second lowest on record, and maximum winds were estimated at 190 miles per hour near the center. Tides up to 20 feet above normal were forecast from Gulfport to Pascagoula in the 3 pm Special Advisory, with 10-to-l 5-foot tides in the area between Pascagoula and Mobile.
No hurricane as intense as this had ever struck the mainland of the United States. The need to remove everyone from the tidal beaches was urgent and, in at least one case, arrests were made in a desperate move to save lives. By official estimate 81,000 people moved to safety. The remainder were fully warned but some stubbornly remained: the curious, the unbelievers, the survivors of past storms, and those few who could not bring themselves to abandon all they owned.
By 7 pm Sunday, the Weather Bureau Office at Boothville, Louisiana—about 60 miles southeast of New Orleans—was reporting wind gusts of 107 miles per hour. An offshore drilling rig was raked by gusts estimated to be about 170 miles per hour. On the Mississippi shore as the evening progressed the wind increased until by 10 pm its sound was a continuous roar. In the unbelievable chaos of windblown debris, the dreadful tide moved on the land. Sweeping inshore it was an irresistible force topped by crashing waves that demolished everything in its path. Ocean-going vessels and small craft alike were swept inland and deposited among the remnants of buildings. Eyewitnesses reported that the deluge remained ashore very briefly—only for some 20-30 minutes—sucking back into the Gulf of Mexico with such speed that it carried much of its appalling burden with it.
The eye of CAMILLE moved inland just east of Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, about 11:30 pm that night. It has been estimated that gusts of
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