The Hurricane of 1938

[KamaAina]

Yes, stuff similar to this has happened before -- every 75 years or so.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_New_England_hurricane

The New England Hurricane of 1938 (or Great New England Hurricane, Yankee Clipper, Long Island Express, or simply the Great Hurricane) was the first major hurricane to strike New England since 1869. The storm formed near the coast of Africa in September of the 1938 Atlantic hurricane season, becoming a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Long Island on September 21. The hurricane was estimated to have killed between 682 and 800 people, damaged or destroyed over 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at US$306 million ($4.7 Billion in 2012). Even as late as 1951, damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas. It remains the most powerful, costliest and deadliest hurricane in recent New England history, eclipsed in landfall intensity perhaps only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635....

The storm was first spotted south of the Cape Verde Islands on September 10. Over the next ten days, it steadily gathered strength and slowly tracked to the west-northwest. By September 20, while centered east of the Bahamas, the hurricane is estimated to have reached Category 5 intensity. In response to a deep trough over Appalachia, the hurricane veered northward, sparing the Bahamas, Florida, the Carolinas, and the Mid-Atlantic. At the same time, a high pressure system was centered north of Bermuda, preventing the hurricane from making an eastward turn out to sea. Thus, the hurricane was effectively squeezed to the north between the two weather systems. This conclusion was not reached merely with the wisdom of hindsight. As described by Scott Mandia, professor of physical sciences, State University of New York, in an article on this hurricane, there was a lone voice in the wilderness of the New York meteorological offices crying out a warning of hurricane for Long Island. In Professor Mandia's words, "Charlie Pierce, a young research forecaster for the Bureau concluded that the storm would not continue to move northeast and curve out to sea but would instead track due north. He was overruled by more senior meteorologists and the official forecast was for cloudy skies and gusty conditions – but no hurricane (Francis, 1998). Because the official forecast was not cause for alarm, even as the winds picked up speed and the waves rolled in, nobody realized that a catastrophe was only a few hours away."...

Eastern Long Island experienced the worst of the storm. The Dune Road area of Westhampton Beach was obliterated, resulting in 29 deaths. A cinema in Westhampton was also swept out to sea; about 20 people at a matinee, and the theater — projectionist and all — landed two miles (3 km) into the Atlantic and drowned.[15] There were 21 other deaths through the rest of the East End of Long Island. The storm surge temporarily turned Montauk into an island as it flooded across the South Fork at Napeague and obliterated the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road. As a result of the hurricane, the Westhampton Beach School District changed its school's nickname from the Green Wave to the Hurricanes....

In the beach towns of Clinton, Westbrook, and Old Saybrook, buildings were found as wreckage across coastal roads. Actress Katharine Hepburn waded to safety from her Old Saybrook beach home, narrowly escaping death. She stated in her 1991 book that 95% of her personal belongings were either lost or destroyed, including her 1932 Oscar which was later found intact. In Old Lyme, beach cottages were flattened or swept away. At Stonington a New York, New Haven & Hartford passenger train was stranded on a causeway; along the Stonington shorefront, buildings were swept off their foundations and found two miles (3 km) inland. Rescuers later searching for survivors in the homes in Mystic found live fish and crabs in kitchen drawers and cabinets....

We really cannot afford to have these kinds of storms more than once every 75 years.

[Gregorian]

1. My mother was a girl coming home from school in that storm.

She and her sister hung to cables that they had along the sides of roads there. She said trees and chickens and were in the air. The roof of her house was gone. But she made it home, just barely. And she is afraid of worms after that. For some reason worms were all over the place after the storm.

I fear that our climate is only catching up to our carbon dioxide output. I think that there is a lot more climate confusion and extreme yet to come, even if we stop using fuel. And we're far far away from making any changes in what we're doing. We recently turned the 7 billion corner. Even since then there are 50 million new people. Shoes, clothes, food, medical, housing, water, septic... The list goes on. And so does the growing.

[mikki35]

2. Contrast = total lack of warning in 1938

It's difficult to realize now, but in 1938, there was no radar, no plane surveillance of developing hurricanes, no satellite imagery - they relied almost entirely on reports from voluntary observations from ships at sea. The very last warning came from Jacksonville, Florida Weather Bureau station, which was also one of the ones with, far and away, the most experience with hurricanes. Warnings went out on Sept 18-19, but it turned away from Miami and veered north. Responsibility was transferred to the Washington DC Bureau, who massively dropped the ball. Granted, they had little evidence to go on, and NO ships were reporting anything. New York and Boston bureaus went along with that. So, even with barometers showing ridiculously low readings, they were reporting that the "tropical storm" was rapidly blowing out to sea. That was on September 21st, while it was making landfall across New Jersey and New York. The Harvard University observatory at Blue Hill (90 miles from the vortex) measured wind speed at a steady 121 mph, with 186 mph gusts (puts Sandy in a different light - cannot even imagine how much worse that would have been). About 1 pm, a news broadcast from NY stated that the storm had changed course and "would probably hit Long Island." That was the first and ONLY warning almost all of New England got. By 2:30 pm, it hit - 1 1/2 hours is not much time to prepare, even for the very lucky few that caught that broadcast. No one even alerted the Coast Guard.

It also struck very nearly at high tide, making the storm surge reach epic proportions. The power of the first wave that struck was so great that it registered on a seismograph in Alaska, and the ocean spray whitened windows in Vermont.

One of the worst struck was Providence, R.I., huge waves came up Narragansett Bay and broke near City Hall. When it subsided, Providence was under 13 feet of water. Many pedestrians were killed.

They estimated that enough trees had been blown down, they could have built 200,000 homes with the wood. The apple crop for that season, throughout New England, was a total loss.

So, when I think back on Sandy, and I realize just how monstrously awful it could have been with the same kind of total lack of warning...I get the shivers.

(Most of the information above came from the NYT)

[mikki35]

3. Time interval

Another interesting fact - it had been 123 years since a hurricane had impacted New England to any significant degree. Another reason why the Weather Bureau got it so abysmally wrong.

[Mariana]

4. My dad was born early Sep 22, 1938, in Providence.

Imagine going into labor during a storm like that. My grandmother told me about the adventures she had getting to the hospital. Yikes.

[kwassa]

5. In downtown Providence ....

There are brass plaques on some of the downtown buildings, way up high, showing the high water line. The city later built a gate system that protected the downtown area this time from Sandy.