Hattie: The Hurricane With Three Names.

Hattie became a tropical storm on October 26, 1961 over the Caribbean. It became a hurricane late on the evening of October 27th. Hattie headed north and seemed destined to head to Cuba. The the hurricane rounded the tip of Honduras/Nicaragua and curved back to the west and southwest. With top winds of 132 mph, the category four hurricane steamed westward through the Gulf of Honduras.

On Halloween, the central pressure dropped to 920 millibars and winds increased to 160 mph. Now, a category five hurricane was taking aim on British Honduras (we know it as Belize today). At landfall, maximum sustained winds were 160 mph and the storm surge was as high as fifteen feet. The destruction at Belize City was so severe that the capital was moved to a new location after the storm.

Hattie moved across Guatemala and passed into the eastern Pacific. It grew from a tropical depression to a tropical storm over the Gulf of Tehautepec and was christened Tropical Storm Simone, in keeping with the rules of naming storms.

By November 2nd, Simone turned northward and made landfall in Mexico. It crossed the Isthmus of Tehuantepec and weakened to a depression again. But the depression would soon pass back into the Gulf of Mexico and it began to strengthen again over the warm waters. On November 4th, the system again regained tropical storm strength and was named Inga.

The storm strengthened as it meandered along the coast between Tampico and Veracruz. The system finally dissipated on November 8th.

There is scientific debate whether Hattie/Simone/Inga is actually one storm or two, but the record books show it as two different storms in the Atlantic, and one in the Pacific. Still, many consider it to have been one storm.

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