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1893 Cheniere Caminada hurricane

Category 4 Atlantic hurricane in 1893

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The Cheniere Caminada hurricane was the tenth known hurricane of the 1893 Atlantic hurricane season. Its origins remain unclear as neither maritime nor land-based weather observations captured its formative stages. The official Atlantic hurricane database indicates that the storm formed in the western Caribbean Sea on September 27, after which the storm intensified into a hurricane and struck northeastern portions of the Yucatan Peninsula on September 29 before curving northward into the Gulf of Mexico. A genesis in the western Caribbean was also contemporaneously noted by the U.S. Weather Bureau as a possible origin for the system. Another assessment of the storm published in 2014 suggested that the hurricane may have originated in the Bay of Campeche, avoiding the Yucatan Peninsula entirely. The first clear indication that the hurricane existed came on October 1, when the storm was in the northern Gulf of Mexico and closing in on the coast of Louisiana as a small but formidable hurricane; the storm's effects were already being experienced by the time the hurricane was first detected. On the night of October 1–2, the hurricane made landfall on southeastern Louisiana near Cheniere Caminada at peak strength, with its 130 mph (215 km/h) winds ranking it as a low-end Category 4 hurricane on the modern Saffir–Simpson scale. The storm then made landfall on October 2 as a slightly weaker hurricane with maximum sustained winds of 110 mph (175 km/h) near Ocean Springs, Mississippi. It weakened inland over the Southeastern U.S. and continued to decay after entering the open Atlantic at Cape Hatteras, after which it dissipated around October 5.

Meteorological history

Little is known about the early history of the Cheniere Caminada hurricane. Alluding to the lack of knowledge concerning the storm's genesis, the U.S. Weather Bureau referred to the storm as a "so-called Gulf [of Mexico] hurricane" in an article in the October 1893 issue of the Monthly Weather Review. In the same article, the Weather Bureau speculated that the storm could have originated closer to Mexico or Honduras from a long trough of low pressure, but also noted that the contemporaneous wind observations along the Gulf Coast could lend credence to a sudden emergence of the hurricane in the gulf as late as the morning of October 1. In the official Atlantic hurricane database sanctioned by the World Meteorological Organization, the storm is listed as beginning on September 27 in the western Caribbean Sea northeast of the border between Nicaragua and Honduras. The nascent system strengthened into a hurricane the next day and on September 29 and reached the equivalent of a low-end Category 2 hurricane intensity on the modern-day Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale with estimated maximum sustained winds of 100 mph (160 km/h). Tracking towards the northwest, the storm then traversed the northeastern parts of the Yucatan Peninsula and weakened slightly before moving into the Gulf of Mexico, where it restrengthened and curved towards the north and later northeast.

Despite the prior hurricane intensity, only after October 1 – when rain from the storm was already moving onshore the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico – did weather observations clearly indicate that a hurricane existed. The Weather Bureau had been unaware of the storm, predicting southeasterly winds and fair conditions following "light showers" on the Gulf coast for the night of October 1. In reviewing and revising the tracks of historical storms maintained by the National Climatic Center, meteorologist José Fernández-Partagás found that the storm's listed positions prior to October 1 could not be reviewed due to a "lack of suitable information" and made no changes to the preexisting track in the database. A new analysis conducted by meteorologist Michael Chenoweth of Atlantic tropical cyclones in the late 19th century, published in the Journal of Climate in 2014, lists the storm as having originated in the Bay of Campeche on September 27, after which the storm tracked northeast and bypassed the Yucatan Peninsula before entering the north-central Gulf of Mexico where the presence of the storm was first clearly resolved.

By October 1, the storm was already a strong hurricane; in the official Atlantic hurricane database the storm is listed as beginning the day as the equivalent of a Category 2 hurricane. Further intensification ensued, and the storm reached its peak intensity early on October 2 with maximum sustained winds of 130 mph (215 km/h), making the storm equivalent to a low-end Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson scale. Hurricane force winds began to spread onshore at dusk on October 1 and at around 08:00 UTC (3:00 a.m. CDT) on October 2 the hurricane made landfall on southeastern Louisiana near Cheniere Caminada at peak strength. Weather instruments in the path of the storm were all blown down or destroyed, leaving no surviving complete record of the winds and rain associated with the landfalling hurricane. While not directly measured, a central barometric pressure of 948 mbar (hPa; 27.99 inHg) was estimated by the Atlantic hurricane reanalysis project of the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory to have accompanied the hurricane at landfall based on extrapolations from later measurements. The hurricane was likely small upon making landfall, with the estimated 14 mi (23 km) radius of maximum wind being smaller than the average Atlantic storm at a similar intensity and latitude. The center of the hurricane then passed between New Orleans, Louisiana, and Port Eads, Louisiana, before making landfall on the coast of Mississippi near Ocean Springs later on October 2.

The storm had weakened by the time of its Mississippi landfall, with weather observations indicating that the storm's maximum sustained winds had declined to around 110 mph (175 km/h), making the storm comparable to a modern high-end Category 2 hurricane upon its encounter with Mississippi. A central barometric pressure of 970 mbar (hPa; 28.64 inHg) was recorded on board the schooner B. Frank Neally at Moss Point, Mississippi; a period of near-calm coincided with the lowest air pressure. The storm then weakened as it progressed inland, diminishing into a tropical storm as it tracked over Georgia and the Carolinas. It reached Cape Hatteras and continued out to the Atlantic by October 5 where it later dissipated. The storm or its remnants may have persisted afterwards; the barque Comorin encountered a storm at an unspecified location along its voyage from Hamburg to Bermuda between October 7–9 that may have been a continuation of the Cheniere Caminada hurricane.

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