The extreme tides inundated downtown Port Lavaca with 2 feet of flood water and displaced fishing boats and tug boats on Highway 35. Tides of 15 to 17 feet above mean sea level inundated Port O'Connor, Indianola, Palacios and Matagorda. The higher tides reached the Upper Texas coast by the 8th as the large hurricane approached with storm surge eventually reaching 10 to 15 feet around Galveston Bay. Wind gusts of 80 to 90 mph were reported from Rockport to Corpus Christi.Ĭarla's storm surge devastated the Texas coast, rising to 10 feet above normal along a 300 mile swath from Port Aransas to Sabine Pass. Wind gusts were estimated to be around 150 mph at Victoria, Port Aransas, and Edna. Extreme peak wind gusts were estimated to be near 170 mph at Port Lavaca as the wind equipment blew away after reading 153 mph. The highest sustained wind speeds reported were 115 mph at Matagorda, 110 mph at Victoria, and 88 mph at Galveston. Hurricane force gusts were recorded along the Texas coast from Port Mansfield to Galveston. Winds and Storm SurgeĬarla was an extremely large hurricane with devastating effects from the winds and storm surge for the Middle and Upper Texas coast. In comparison, the storm surge from Hurricane Audrey led to 416 fatalities in Louisiana and extreme southeast Texas. Most assuredly, this impacted the number of fatalities associated with this dangerous hurricane with 46 people killed and 465 injured. The evacuation of a half of a million people was determined to be the largest evacuation in United States history up to that time. The warnings prompted a large scale evacuation of the islands and low lying coastal areas of Texas into southwest Louisiana, which had been devastated by Hurricane Audrey in June of 1957. Hurricane watches were issued for the entire Texas coast on the 8 th of September and warnings were issued on the 9 th all along the Texas coast. Carla weakened to a tropical storm on the morning of the 12 th just east of Austin. The eye of Carla moved across Port O'Connor and Port Lavaca and then inland just east of Victoria. Carla made landfall on the afternoon of the 11 th on the northeast part of Matagorda Island as a strong Category 4 hurricane with a minimum central pressure of 931 millibars, or 27.49 inches of mercury, and sustained winds of 145 mph. Carla weakened slightly as it made a loop off the coast from Port O'Connor. The winds increased to around 175 mph early on the morning of the 11 th making Carla a Category 5 hurricane. After skimming the Yucatan peninsula, Carla moved northwest and strengthened to a large major hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico on the evening of the 7 th.

It became a tropical storm off the coast of Honduras on the 5 th and quickly gained hurricane strength as it moved north to east of the Yucatan peninsula on the 6 th. Storm HistoryĬarla began as a tropical depression in the southwest Caribbean Sea on September 3 rd, 1961. Carla ranks as the 9 th most intense hurricane to affect the United States since 1851. Carla was the last of 6 hurricanes to make landfall on the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson scale, with sustained winds stronger than 130 mph, in the 20 th century.

Carla was the most intense hurricane to make landfall on the Texas coast in the 20 th century and second in recorded history only to the Indianola hurricane of 1886. Although fifty years have passed, no other hurricane has made landfall in Texas with the intensity of Hurricane Carla since.

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