Abstract In September 1979, two research teams traveled to the coastal area in the path of Hurricane Frederic to record observations of the storm’s rainbands with mobile radar recorders. The researchers were in position at the National Weather Service offices at Slidell, Louisiana and Pensacola, Florida, a few hours before Frederic’s outer convective bands reached the Gulf Coast. Although the recorder taken to Pensacola was damaged in transit, the recording system at Slidell collected digital data for 26 h as Frederic moved ashore at 6–7 m s−1, approximately 125 km to the cast of Slidell. Calculations of storm-total rainfall indicate that local rainfall maxima tended to occur in two general areas: 1) parallel to the coast near the point of landfall, with a northward extension approximately along Frederic’s track, and 2) on a long band oriented from south-southeast to north-northwest ∼50 kin to the west of the storm track. The storm-total rainfall maximum along the coast was explained by a rapid increase i...