Hurricane Carla strikes the Texas coast as a Category 4 hurricane, the second strongest storm ever to hit the state.

Hurricane Carla was a powerful and destructive tropical cyclone that made landfall in Texas as a Category 4 on the Saffir–Simpson scale. Striking the middle Texas coast in September 1961, Carla was the second most intense hurricane on record in Texas, only behind the 1886 Indianola hurricane. The third named storm of the 1961 Atlantic hurricane season, Carla developed from an area of squally weather in the southwestern Caribbean Sea on September 3. The system was upgraded to a tropical storm on September 5 and reached hurricane intensity the next day. On September 7, Carla entered the Gulf of Mexico, passing northeast of the Yucatán Peninsula. Early on September 10, Carla became a Category 4 hurricane and peaked in intensity a day later with maximum sustained winds of 145 miles per hour and a minimum central pressure of 927 millibars. The hurricane made landfall in the afternoon of September 11 near Port O'Connor, Texas with the same wind speed and a slightly higher pressure. Traveling inland, Carla weakened to a tropical storm on September 12 and transitioned into an extratropical cyclone on September 13 while centered over southern Oklahoma. Carla's remnants reached the Labrador Sea, Canada and dissipated on September 18, 1961.