On This Date: Hurricane Connie Set Flooding Groundwork For Diane 5 Days Later
On Aug. 12, 1955, 70 years ago today, Hurricane Connie made a Category 2 landfall near Morehead City, North Carolina, with strong winds and storm surge flooding. But Connie's northwestward jog inland led to torrential rainfall from North Carolina to western New England.
Just five days later, Diane made landfall just 80 miles farther down the North Carolina coast near Carolina Beach. Diane wrung out 10 to 20 inches of rain over some of the same areas just soaked by Connie, with massive inland flooding from North Carolina to Massachusetts.
Diane claimed 184 lives in the U.S., primarily due to rainfall flooding, and it's still among the top 25 deadliest U.S. hurricanes and tropical storms.
And that wasn't the last of 1955's storms for the East Coast. Just over a month after Diane's landfall, Hurricane Ione made landfall exactly where Connie did, near Morehead City, North Carolina, at virtually the exact same wind intensity (Category 2).
Connie, Diane and Ione were among the first names retired from use for future storms, based on their notoriously damaging and/or deadly impacts.
Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.
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