Hurricane Janet was the most powerful hurricane of the 1955 Atlantic hurricane season and one of the strongest Atlantic hurricanes on record. It made landfall as a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, causing catastrophic damage and at least 687 deaths in the Lesser Antilles, Yucatán Peninsula, and mainland Mexico.

A weak tropical wave was first discovered near Cape Verde in mid-September, although no earlier history is known. After heading westward, a weak tropical disturbance noted by Air France and Iberia by September 21, although because the tropical wave was so weak that the National Hurricane Center was unable to detect it. It organized into a tropical storm on September 21 east of the Lesser Antilles.

However, as a tropical cyclone, Janet was operationally not discovered until it attained hurricane status on September 21. Janet was a small hurricane, and rapidly intensified on September 22, becoming a Category 3 hurricane near Barbados, completely skipping category 1 and 2 intensity. Becoming a category 3, Janet passed very close to the island of Barbados, having a 30 mi (37 km) wide eye and a very small wind field. Passing through the Grenadines on the following day, Janet entered a region of unfavorable conditions, and rapidly weakened to on September 23. Heading westward across the Caribbean Sea, conditions began more favorable, and Janet quickly re-intensified into a category 2 hurricane. Janet eventually reaching a peak of 175 mph (280 km/h) winds in the western Caribbean Sea.

Janet Napolitano (/nəpɒlɨˈtænoʊ/; born November 29, 1957) is the third and current United States Secretary of Homeland Security, serving in the administration of President Barack Obama. She is the fourth person (including an acting Secretary) to hold the position, which was created after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. A member of the Democratic Party, she was the 21st Governor of Arizona from 2003 to 2009. She was Arizona's third female governor, and the first woman to win re-election. Prior to her election as governor, she served as Attorney General of Arizona from 1999 to 2002. She was the first woman and the 23rd person to serve in that office. Napolitano is the 1977 Truman Scholar from New Mexico. Forbes ranked her as the world's 15th most powerful woman in 2011.

Janet Napolitano was born on November 29, 1957, in New York City, the daughter of Jane Marie (née Winer) and Leonard Michael Napolitano, who was the dean of the University of New Mexico School of Medicine. She is of half Italian ancestry and is a Methodist. She was the eldest of three children; she has a younger brother and sister. She was raised in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, and Albuquerque, New Mexico, where she graduated from Sandia High School in Albuquerque in 1975 and was voted Most Likely to Succeed. She graduated from Santa Clara University in Santa Clara, California, where she won a Truman Scholarship, and was valedictorian. In 1978, she studied for a term at the London School of Economics as part of the Santa Clara's exchange programme through IES Abroad. She then received her Juris Doctor (J.D.) from the University of Virginia School of Law. After law school she served as a law clerk for Judge Mary M. Schroeder of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, and then joined Schroeder's former firm, the Phoenix law firm Lewis and Roca.