Hurricane Hazel: The Storm That Erased a Coastline

On October fifteenth, nineteen fifty-four, Hurricane Hazel made landfall near Long Beach as a Category Four storm, the only hurricane of the twentieth century to strike North Carolina at that intensity. Winds reached about one hundred thirty miles per hour. A seventeen-foot storm surge, arriving at full moon high tide, swept Long Beach with devastating force, destroying three hundred fifty-two of its three hundred fifty-seven structures in a single pass.

Nineteen people were killed across North Carolina. After landfall, Hazel tracked far inland, pounding Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and eventually Ontario, where flooding killed scores more. The storm fundamentally reshaped how North Carolina thought about coastal construction and hurricane preparedness.