Early on the morning of September 22, 1975, Hurricane Eloise was in the central Gulf of Mexico about 260 miles south of New Orleans. Eloise had been traversing the islands of the Caribbean for several days before passing through the Yucatan Channel. Eloise had been identified as a tropical depression east northeast of the Leeward Islands on September 13th. It passed just north of the Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico before moving It became a weak hurricane before hitting the northern coast of the Dominican Republic on the 16th. The mountainous terrain of Hispaniola and Cuba knocked the stuffing out of the storm and as it meandered westward, returning to open water on the 19th, moving toward the Yucatan Channel.
Eloise began to turn northward ahead of an approaching trough of low pressure over the Central United States. It steadily intensified as it got organized over the southern Gulf of Mexico, becoming a hurricane on the afternoon of the 21st. At 7 a.m. on the 22nd, top winds were up to 95 mph and the central pressure was 986 millibars. Forecasters predicted that it would make landfall later that evening near Mobile. By noon, it was a Category Two hurricane with top winds of 110 mph. Rapid intensification ensued during the afternoon and evening with the pressure falling to 958 millibars by midnight. The winds increased to 140 mph. And the hurricane turned to the north northeast. Warnings were frantically shifted eastward across the Florida Panhandle to Cedar Key. Problem was, many people had gone to bed. Many folks woke during the middle of the night to the sound of fire sirens and civil defense loudspeakers urging them to move to higher ground.
The hurricane made landfall around 7am on the 23rd between Fort Walton and Panama City with a central pressure of 955 millibars and top winds of 145 mph. Eloise was the first hurricane to make landfall in that area in the 20th century. A storm surge of 12-16 feet accompanied the storm with a high water mark of 18.2 feet at Dune Allen Beach, Florida. Over $100 million in damage was reported and there were four storm-related fatalities in the hurricane.
