MINOR TYPO Update to Page 51

2nd Paragraph: The word "issues" should be "issued". (The letters are right next to each other!)

After the publication of the Almanac, the results of the re-analysis of all of the available data on the great 1938 hurricane were announced. I have modified the entry to include those findings. It is now believed that the storm was a category 3 hurricane in New York, Connecticut, and Rhode Island. Previously it was listed as a category 2 extratropical storm.

Great New England Hurricane/Long Island Express - From Florida to Long Island in one day. - Landfall: Wednesday, September 21, 1938

Early in the week of September 18 the existence of a major hurricane well east of the Bahamas was widely reported in the press. Residents in Florida—no doubt inspired by the cataclysmic storms of 1926, 1928, and 1935—were boarding up. There was good news on Tuesday morning, September 20, however. The monstrous hurricane was swinging north and the worst of it was expected to stay offshore of the East Coast. Still, the Weather Bureau issues warnings from Virginia to New Jersey for the fringe effects of the storm. Now we know the monster hurricane was at category 5 strength early in the morning of September 20 east of the Bahamas, about 400 miles east of Miami.

The weather had been cold and rainy for weeks on Long Island, New York. It was not a nice September at all. So, when more bad weather was forecast, there was no special concern. On Wednesday morning, September 21, the center of the hurricane was about seventy-five-miles off Cape Hatteras, “moving rapidly north-northeast,” according to the Weather Bureau advisory. The wind was already strong as far north as New England, and forecasters didn’t realize that the hurricane was speeding north at about 50 mph and accelerating. They were always behind the curve. The storm averaged about 60 mph between North Carolina and New York.

The northern edge of the eyewall reached central Long Island, near Islip, NY at 1:50 P.M. on the afternoon of September 21, with the center coming ashore about 2:45 P.M. The specific warning for that area went out at 3:00 P.M. By that time, the damage had been done.

The storm surge plus the waves reached thirty feet or more on the south shore of Long Island. Coastal homes from Fire Island to the east were washed away. Most buildings on the eastern half of Long Island were severely damaged. But, it was worse to the north. Like the Great 1815 Hurricane, Narragansett Bay, which opens to the south, was pushed into downtown Providence and covered the second floors of some buildings. The winds and coastal tides caused widespread damage on the eastern side of the storm track. Heavy rain, falling on the already saturated soil, caused flooding throughout the Northeast and New England that lasted many days. About 700 people died in the storm, 600 of them in New England.

The reports written at the time said that the storm likely became extratropical (see page 85) off southern New Jersey and came ashore with maximum sustained winds of about 100 mph, but recent re-analysis shows the storm to have been a category 3 hurricane at landfall with maximum winds estimated at 120 mph. Providence recorded 87 mph sustained winds, although it’s believed that category 3 winds occurred elsewhere in Rhode Island and Connecticut. The peak wind reach just under hurricane force in both New York City and Boston, but Blue Hill Observatory, near Boston, measured sustained winds of 121 mph with gusts to 186 mph. This reading was taken at an elevation of 635 feet, however. That intense circulation aloft was a legacy of a category 5 storm that had been east of Miami just the morning before.