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We've gotten a bit better with hurricane predictions
By adamg on Fri, 09/21/2018 - 10:02am
Sometime between 2:15 and 2:45 p.m. on Sept. 21, 1938, what became known as the Great Hurricane of 1938 slammed into land - the barrier islands along the South Shore of Long Island - following Weather Bureau warning of just your basic September gales. By the time the storm barreled up the Connecticut and into Canada, it had killed 682, destroyed tens of thousands of homes and left Providence under 20 feet of water.
The Boston area was on the outer edge of the storm, but even here, trees toppled in the Public Garden and fell on houses in Cambridge. Along the South Boston waterfront, boats were smashed together. The observatory atop the Great Blue Hill recorded sustained winds of 121 m.p.h. with gusts up to 186 m.p.h.
WEEI weatherman E. B. Rideout, one of the country's first broadcast forecasters, was one of the few to call the storm correctly.
As Aram Goudsouzian writes in The Hurricane of 1938, Rideout (who inspired Don Kent to become a weatherman), would punish himself for blown forecasts by forgoing pudding at his daily lunch at Durgin-Park. On Sept. 22, though, he ate two.
Another forecaster who predicted the storm would slam into New England was Charles Pierce, then a new employee at the Weather Bureau.
Both Rideout and Pierce looked at what little data they had - at 9 that morning, the New York City office of the Weather Bureau had no data at all - and saw that the storm, which had been near the coast, would be funneled along a low-pressure trough straight north into Long Island and New England by high-pressure systems to its west and east.
But many refused to believe them. As the Weather Doctor writes:
The Great Hurricane of 1938 raced up the American east coast as the morning dawned on 21 September 1938. However, the senior forecasters at the Washington DC Weather Bureau Office had quashed the forecast of junior meteorologist Charles Pierce, which proved to be the more correct, and, early that morning, issued an advisory stating that the storm was dissipating and moving away from the coast.
Pierce's prediction was pooh-poohed at a forecaster meeting at noon, less than three hours before the storm smacked into Long Island, by Charles Mitchell, the bureau's senior forecaster. The Washington Post reports:
Afterward, the Weather Bureau defended itself by insisting that a better forecast wouldn’t have mattered anyway because New Englanders “aren’t hurricane-minded”. In any event, shortly thereafter, chief forecaster Charles Mitchell resigned and Charlie Pierce was promoted.
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Comments
California
Maine?
Jeez, how did I do that?
Canada. That's what I meant to type. Honest.
Who needs NOAA
All that sciency stuff is bunk! Providence hasn't flooded since they started lighting fires on the river every couple of weeks. Wards off the bad hurricane spirits.
It is easy to forget how much
It is easy to forget how much can be accomplished with enough manual labor thrown at a problem.
Strong storms before fossil fuels?
I realize fossil fuels were becoming more common in 1938 but history shows many other strong storms dating back to colonial times with scant firewood as fuel. Many froze to death in strong storms. Certainly there were worse storms before U.S. History was recorded. It would take a heart of stone not to laugh at the "Man Made Global Warming" theory and AlGore making billions today at his waterfront home. Apparently no fear of sea-level rise?
As for the 1938 Hurricane, I'm surprised ship traffic didn't communicate more information to land. Telegraphs were in full effect and some ship to shore radio was available.
God Bless E.B. Rideout and Don Kent, two of the best. I believe Don Kent was one of the early predictors of the Blizzard of '78 on the old maps drawn with magic marker.
The error in forecasts was
The error in forecasts was probably a mix of hubris, bad data, and willful denial. Just guessing though.
You sir
Are an idiot.
Strong storms, yes. Just not every year.
Blue Hill observatory has a couple of centuries of data. Shut up and go look at it.
sigh
Just because there was once a storm stronger than some today does not mean man-influenced climate change is not happening.
It takes a head of stone to refuse to acknowledge the widespread fact and trend based evidence and consensus of 99% of scientists who are not on the payroll of the Heritage Foundation.
Say it with me: Anecdotes are not proof of anything.
Repeat after me, "stronger
Repeat after me, "stronger weather events on average and more frequent occurrences".
What that means is 100-year floods essentially become 10-year floods.
Try Again
The only thing that has gotten worse is the $ damage -- 3 reasons:
and of course also the value of the $ due to long term inflation
However -- despite the promises and threats of the Global Warming Sect -- There is no empirical evidence of any secular trend of
Such storms cluster in roughly periodic cycles -- thus we had a lot of storminess in the 1950's and early 1960's then nothing for several decades and then again more activity relatively recently.
Considering the damage done by the 'Great 38 Blow [no official names for hurricanes at that time] -- Today it would have been considered a Cat5 before weakening slightly at Landfall as it hit head on to the middle of Long Island probably as CAT3 -- then mostly farming country.with some fishermen some beach houses
After it crossed over Long Island Sound and hit the Connecticut Shore line east of New Haven -- it was still strong enough to roar up the Connecticut River Valley passing just east of Hartford and Springfield on up into Vermont [as a Cat 1 Hurricane carrying "Salt Spray with it"]
It also hit Northern New Hampshire and on ito Quebec with enough residual wind punch to wipe out millions of trees. The main elements of the storm missed both New York and Boston -- only Providence received a direct hit as a coastal community. However wind gusts of 186 MPH were recorded attop Blue Hill -- the highest winds associated with a Hurricane to ever hit the North American Continent
Had the "38 followed the path of not-quite a hurricane Sandy -- the FDNY would still be pumping out the basement of the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the staff of the American Museum of Natural History would still be reassembling dinosaurs
The Great Colonial era Gale of 1635 may have been even stronger than even the '38 though of course since there might have been 2 barometers and only a couple of people who knew what barometers measured -- things are sketchy at best
Give him a break
Fish himself was washed up on our shores by that storm in 1938, and ever since has been trying to live quietly among us, taking on many guises, from internet idiot to Really Bad Cop, just to keep us from noticing that he is really a dead, stinking fish.
I grew up
in an area heavily impacted by this storm and I knew people who suffered because of it; one person in particular lost both of their parents in this storm. as a child, I was fortunate to be friends with a lot of old people, and they had seen a lot of weird weather-related shit. for example, once in a harbor area similar to Boston, the tide came in all at once, flooded above mean high tide, stayed that way for two days, and then rushed out.
i have been told that this hurricane of '38 moved northward at about 55 miles per hour, triple or quadruple the speed of most hurricanes. i don't believe everything I hear, but that is some crazy shit if it is true
Hurricanes tend to speed up
I believe hurricanes tend to speed up the farther north they are.
Hurricane Bob came ashore at Rhode Island while moving at 32mph
Carol came through traveling at up to 39mph
50mph is still very remarkable though.
In the physics building at
In the physics building at WPI, they have (or used to) the campus weather station logs - including the one-week sheets from the graphing/recording barometer.
There was a framed piece of paper on one wall - the graph page for that week in 1938. Worcester got hammered in that storm, of course, and the page illustrates it - the recording line dropping like a stone to unfrequented depths on the graph.
Epic film! Who is the narrator?
Wow. This is brilliant. The narration and the film. Any ideas who the narrator is? I'd listen to himn read the ingredients on a cereal box.
Thanks for sharing, Adam.
Impact on Mount Auburn Cemetery and Arnold Arboretum trees
At Mount Auburn Cemetery 811 (approximately 16% of the total collection) were destroyed: https://mountauburn.org/wp-content/uploads/Sweet-Auburn-Summer-2001.pdf
Arnold Arboretum also lost approx. 1500 trees: http://arnoldia.arboretum.harvard.edu/pdf/articles/1938-6--hurricane-dam...