Remembering Hurricane Frederic…

Sunday, September 9, 1979 dawned clear and beautiful across Central Alabama, with bright blue skies, cool temperatures and low humidity. The morning low at Birmingham was 62F, with dewpoints in the lower 50s. Northerly flow behind a cold that had progressed into the Gulf was producing the fine weather.

It was a perfect day for going to the lake, and all my co-workers at Cobb’s Cinema City 8 theater in Roebuck were heading to Logan Martin for one last summer fling. Hurricane David had rampaged up the coast of Florida and into Georgia on Labor Day that week. There was another tropical system following right on David’s heels. It had briefly become a hurricane on the 1st while west of the Leeward Islands, but it had weakened due to the interaction with David’s outflow. It passed near Barbados on the 3rd, through the Virgin Islands and then across Puerto Rico. It curved over the island of Hispaniola, which weakened it to a depression.

The system became lost in the excitement of the first week of my senior year at Huffman High School and a football weekend. But by early on that Sunday morning, September 9th, the depression was near the south coast of Cuba, poised to enter the Gulf of Mexico. I heard the advisory on NOAA Weatheradio that morning and realized immediately this was going to be a problem storm. As one would expect, conditions were favorable for intensification, and the system was expected to quickly become a tropical storm again shortly. Before we had returned from a fun day at the lake, that had happened. Frederic was back on the board.

On Monday the 10th, I excitedly breezed through my short school day, anxious to get home and hear the latest. Frederic was already strengthening, even though its circulation was not quite out over the water. At 5 p.m., Frederic was a hurricane. The hurricane strengthened steadily during the day on the 11th, and a hurricane watch was ordered along the Gulf Coast at 5 p.m. The center was just under 400 miles SSE of Mobile, moving northeast at 9 mph. Top winds were 115 mph and the pressure was down to 960 mb. Hurricane warnings were posted at 10 p.m. from Panama City to Grand Isle, Louisiana.

On Wednesday the 12th, preparations were well underway along the Gulf Coast. I got permission to carry my Weatheradio to school that day, and followed the advisories as Frederic’s winds reached 130 mph and the pressure dropped to 943 mb. I settled in after school for a long night of following the hurricane on WWL and through Channel 13’s new weatherman: James Spann. About 5, I got a call from the theatre manager. He needed me to come in on my off night because a concession person’s mom wouldn’t allow them to work because of the hurricane. Well, I certainly wasn’t working either…because of the hurricane. I stretched the truth a bit and said I had too much homework. Homework in the form of a category three hurricane.

Frederic came ashore near the Alabama/Mississippi border that evening as a strong category three hurricane with top winds of 125 mph A storm surge of up to 12 feet was measured along the Baldwin County coast in Alabama. Damage totaled $2.3 billion.

I will post some advisories from Frederic’s landfall day in near real time…

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