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Hurricane Faith (1966)
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Hurricane Faith was a long lived Cape Verde-type hurricane during the 1966 Atlantic hurricane season. The August storm formed near the Cape Verde Islands and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, reaching Category 3 status as it by passed the northern Caribbean Islands and the Bahamas. Faith survived 18 days as a tropical cyclone and maintained hurricane strength for ten consecutive days. It was the sixth named storm and fifth hurricane of the 1966 season.
Faith brushed the Leeward Islands as a Category 1 hurricane and paralleled the northern Caribbean islands as a strong Category 2 hurricane.
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Hurricane Faith was a long lived Cape Verde-type hurricane during the 1966 Atlantic hurricane season. The August storm formed near the Cape Verde Islands and crossed the Atlantic Ocean, reaching Category 3 status as it by passed the northern Caribbean Islands and the Bahamas. Faith survived 18 days as a tropical cyclone and maintained hurricane strength for ten consecutive days. It was the sixth named storm and fifth hurricane of the 1966 season.
Faith brushed the Leeward Islands as a Category 1 hurricane and paralleled the northern Caribbean islands as a strong Category 2 hurricane. Later, Faith struck Faroe Islands and Norway as a powerful extratropical storm. There were four fatalities as a result of Faith and only minimal damage due to the sparse population.
Meteorological history
After forming on August 21, 1966 as a Cape Verde-type hurricane, Faith moved steadily westward, strengthening as it did so. It curved slowly north as it neared the Leeward Islands and peaked as a Category 3 storm east of the Bahamas as the system headed north-northeast. The hurricane soon dropped back down to a Category 2 storm, and continued on a steady northeast track.
When the storm passed Newfoundland, not only was it still a tropical system, it was still a Category 2 hurricane. Faith struck the Faroe Islands on September 5 with sustained winds still over 100 mph and only then did the storm cease to be a tropical system. The new extratropical storm went on to strike Norway with winds as high as 60 mph. Faith weakened to an extratropical depression over Scandinavia and was tracked over Russia, later degenerating into an extratropical low and swerving north.
Traveling from the Leeward Islands to Newfoundland then Scandinavia, the remnant low pressure area tracked as far north as Franz Josef Land, 300 miles from the North Pole.
Impact and records
In the Caribbean, the approach of Faith caused the Antigua tracking station (which was tracking an unmanned rocket launched by NASA) to shutdown 45 minutes after the rocket lifted off. Faith also produced gale force winds across the northern Leeward Islands and Puerto Rico. The winds only did minor damage and there were no reported fatalities or injuries. Rough seas from Faith, brought 10-15 ft waves to Trinidad and Tobago. The waves caused minor damage to small boats and jetties. In Bermuda, the outer rainbands of Hurricane Faith produced heavy rainfall and winds gusting to 62 mph.
Four people died as a result of the storm; none of them were on land. One man was pitched overboard when his boat was battered by heavy seas. Two others drowned while trying to cross the Atlantic in a rowboat. Another man was missing and presumed dead after heavy seas forced him and his shipmates to abandon their boat off the north coast of Denmark. Property damage was minimal, mainly because the areas impacted by Faith were sparsely populated.
Faith traveled farther and to the most northerly latitude of any Atlantic hurricane. Faith was also one of the longest duration tropical cyclones in the Atlantic Ocean on record, lasting 16 days total and spending 13 as a hurricane.
Because the storm did no major damage, the name Faith was not retired. However changes in the naming lists in 1970 and 1979 prevented further use of the name Faith. In 1998, the name Faith was used to name a pacific typhoon during the 1998 Pacific typhoon season. Today, the name Faith is not on the Atlantic, East Pacific, West Pacific or Southern Hemisphere naming lists.
See also
- List of Atlantic hurricanes
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