Hurricane Camille  Hurricane Camille was the second most intense tropical cyclone on record to strike the United States. The most intense storm of the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season, Camille originated as a tropical depression on August 14, south of Cuba, from a long-tracked tropical wave. Located in a favorable environment for strengthening, the storm quickly intensified into a Category 2 hurricane before striking the western part of Cuba on August 15. Emerging into the Gulf of Mexico, Camille underwent another period of rapid intensification and became a Category 5 hurricane the next day as it moved northward towards the Louisiana–Mississippi region. Despite weakening slightly on August 17, the hurricane quickly re-intensified back into a Category 5 hurricane before it made landfall a half-hour before midnight in Bay St. Louis, Mississippi. At peak intensity, the hurricane had a minimum pressure of . This was the second-lowest pressure recorded for a U.S. landfall, and is one of just four hurricanes to make landfall in the U.S at Category 5 status. Only the 1935 Labor Day hurricane had a lower pressure at landfall. As Camille pushed inland, it quickly weakened and was a tropical depression by the time it was over the Ohio Valley. Once it emerged offshore, Camille was able to restrengthen to a strong tropical storm, before it became extratropical on August 22. Camille was subsequently absorbed by a frontal storm over the North Atlantic on the same day. Camille caused tremendous damage in its wake, and produced a peak official storm surge of . The hurricane flattened nearly everything along the coast of the U.S. state of Mississippi, and caused additional flooding and deaths inland while crossing the Appalachian Mountains of Virginia. In the U.S., Camille killed more than 259 people and caused $1.42 billion in damages (equivalent to $ billion in ). Hurricane Camille originated from a tropical wave that moved off the western coast of Africa on August 5, 1969. It tracked quickly westward along the 15th parallel north, several days later, a tropical disturbance became clearly identifiable on satellite imagery on August 9. By that time, the thunderstorm activity in the disturbance concentrated into a circular area of convection. On the next day, the storm moved through the Lesser Antilles, although there was no evidence of a closed circulation. On August 13, the wave passed near or over the southern coast of Jamaica as its convection spread northeastward through the Bahamas. Subsequently, it began a slower motion to the northwest.