Hurricane Dolores and Socorro Island History

Eighteen years ago, I blogged about a tiny island in the Eastern Pacific which was underneath a very powerful hurricane. That was Hurricane Linda, the most powerful hurricane recorded in that basin, moving over Socorro Island.

Last night, something very similar happened. Hurricane Dolores became an impressive-looking Category 4 storm and raked the island with its eyewall once again.

Our news story said: "Dolores will pass very close to and perhaps right over sparsely populated Socorro Island through Thursday. Dolores will bring the potential for life-threatening conditions including destructive winds, flooding rainfall and storm surge flooding."

The "synoptic" (official) weather station (#76723) that was at Isla Socorro in 1997 was discontinued, but they do have an amateur station which showed 70-mph wind gusts last night before it stopped reporting (archived data is not currently available for some reason).

In 1997, it was estimated that only a handful of people lived there. More recently, WikiPedia says there are about 50 residents at the Naval air station. You can read more about the island and see photos of it on this website Because this is not the first time the island has been hit by a major storm, they likely have a fortified shelter; there are also mountains of over 3,000 feet, so that will help. As far as I can tell, there is no word from the island this morning.

The island has, of course, been directly hit by major hurricanes many times over the years, but no Category 4 or 5 storms have passed within 50 miles of the island since Hurricane Linda. The map below shows the most notable storms.

The "big ones" were Category 4 Hurricane Iselle in 1990 (which moved directly over the island -- technically, the only "landfall" there) and Hurricane Norman in 1978. Norman was also very close, and was a Category 4, but Linda is the only Category 5 storm to approach the islands. Weird fact: As soon as Linda died, she was followed by Nora, a Category 3 hurricane, in nearly the same path!

Not counting Dolores, there were four other major hurricanes to get close to the island since 1997 -- Juliette, Javier 2004, Ileana 2006, and an honorable mention goes to Super Hurricane Rick in 2009, which I blogged about, but it weakened as it moved around the island.

Interestingly, both Linda and Rick maintain the top spots in the list of most intense Eastern Pacific Hurricanes.