11. Hurricane Audrey in 1957
Until it was equaled by Hurricane Alex in 2010, Audrey was the strongest June hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, including the Caribbean and the Gulf of Mexico. The storm made landfall near the Sabine River in Louisiana on June 27, 1957 after first causing extensive damage to offshore oil drilling operations in the Gulf of Mexico. Its storm surge penetrated inland more than twenty miles, peaking at just under thirteen feet. As Audrey moved inland it spawned nearly two dozen tornadoes in Mississippi and Alabama, adding to the spread of destruction it left behind in its wake. In the Midwest, several communities established single day rainfall records while the storm dissipated into a low pressure system, though it continued to move north into Canada, where at least 10 people died as a result of the heavy winds.
Audrey caused extensive damage to transportation systems, flooding which altered the navigable channels of the Mississippi River, knocked out power across a wide swath of the United States, and took the lives of at least 420 people, the majority of whom were killed in the Louisiana community of Cameron by the storm surge. The death count is only an estimate, the exact number of people killed in the storm has never been determined. Its power was such that hurricane force winds of 80 mph were recorded in St. Albans, Vermont. In the aftermath of the storm the name Audrey was retired from the list of available names for hurricanes of the future.