A Look Back at Hurricane Elena of 1985 – Tuesday Update 5:30pm
September 2, 2014 Leave a comment
On this date in 1985, major Hurricane Elena brushed the Alabama Gulf Coast and officially made landfall in Biloxi, Mississippi. The storm brought heavy rainfall to much of the Southeast for several days after. While the storm didn’t make a major impact across central Alabama, the coastal sections of the state had extensive damage…
Here’s a great article from NOAA on the storm:
A well organized cloud pattern moved out of the Sahara Desert and was first identified on satellite
imagery north of the Cape Verde Islands on the 23rd of August. The system moved unusually fast;
30-35 mph to the west across the Atlantic. This combined with the dry saharan air mass around the
system apparently inhibited the formation of a tropical cyclone until it approached Cuba on the evening
of the 27th. On the 28th, reconnaissance aircraft measured 50-60 mph winds in its northern periphery
while the system was centered over central Cuba, and tropical storm Elena was born.
After moving into the Gulf of Mexico north of Havanna, Elena quickly strengthened into a hurricane
on the 29th. A cold front approached from the northwest, which collapsed the steering currents around
Elena, and the storm began recurvature. It approached Florida, moving quite close to Tampa Bay and
Cedar Key, before high pressure bridged the frontal boundary and steered Elena back towards the west.
The cyclone intensified as it accelerated west-northwest, and was a major hurricane by the afternoon of
the 1st. On the 2nd, the hurricane made landfall near Biloxi, Mississippi. Bursting convection after moving inland, Elena brought locally heavy rains to Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky over the succeeding four days that the system maintained integrity while it was inland. After the night of the 5th, the remaining cloud system became stretched in a north-south axis and quickly faded while moving eastward across Kentucky.
Below are storm total rainfall maps for Elena. Rainfall information was obtained from the National
Climatic Data Center. Note the maxima shifts from west of the track to east of the track once Elena
moved inland. This could have been due to an upper low that remained quasi-stationary in the
Tennessee Valley.
Caitlin Golden
WVUA Weather Intern
Source: NOAA
WVUA 