“On September 21, as the hurricane turned northward, Charles Pierce, a junior meteorologist with the Weather Bureau in Washington, DC tracked the storm. Even the next day, as the storm turned northward after sideswiping the Carolinas and New Jersey, there was still no hurricane warning. Review our. As discussed, the Weather Bureau (at least officially) hadn’t predicted a hurricane landfall. Monstrous 40-foot-tall waves and a storm surge 14-18 feet above normal tide level inundated parts of Long Island, and later the southern New England coastline (around 4:00 p.m.), with even higher tides toward Cape Cod. All Rights Reserved. caused 286 deaths and $68 billion in damages, Hurricanes were not given names until 1950. My recent post about the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane of 1933 describes how the same thing happened to create the Ocean City, MD inlet. Since authorities didn’t want to alarm the public (even if warranted), the word “tornado” was not used in that, or any other, weather forecast, even if the forecaster had contemplated doing so. We rely on readers like you to uphold a free press. Of course, based on previous experience, forecasters had much greater confidence in a Virginia landfall than one on Long Island. One of the earliest and most famous of these, Shock Troops of Disaster, was created by the old Works Progress Administration (WPA), and is now considered a vintage relic of the hyperbole associated with government-made disaster films. Piggybacking on the jet stream, the hurricane accelerated to nearly 70 miles per hour, twice the normal velocity for a storm of its size, which meant it had little time to weaken over the colder waters of the northern Atlantic. FACT CHECK: We strive for accuracy and fairness. The Hurricane of 1938 killed upwards of 700 people, left thousands homeless and ranked at the time as the costliest disaster in American history. In any event, shortly thereafter, chief forecaster Charles Mitchell resigned and Charlie Pierce was promoted. 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 1933, there was an all-time record of twenty. But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us! Still, there was no mention of a hurricane, as chief forecaster Charles Mitchell and his senior staff refused to believe that landfall would occur. You also agree to our Terms of Service. We all thought we were being carried out to sea.”  Authorities later declared them dead, only to find out that they had been “blown clear across Narragansett Bay to Connecticut” and were alive and well. By noontime, the skies that held such promise just hours earlier darkened, the winds howled and the sea roiled. Waves smacked against seawalls and sent jets of ocean spray airborne like erupting geysers. That day’s Times alluded to it: tucked away on an inside page was a story that read, in part: “A SEVERE TROPICAL HURRICANE WHICH GAVE CONCERN TO [BUT SPARED] RESIDENTS OF FLORIDA’S EAST COAST……TURNED IN A WIDE NORTHWARD ARC TODAY AND IS APPARENTLY HEADING OUT TO SEA.”. Rideout told his WEEI radio listeners to the skepticism of his peers that the hurricane would hit New England.”) Unfortunately, by then, any warnings would have been futile, as most forms of communication—except wireless, which many people didn’t have anyway–were already destroyed. 3* (sequence controversial) of 1938 was just off the New Jersey Coast did the forecaster issue a final advisory to include “whole gale force winds” (up to 73 mph). Although most forecasters at the U.S. It was a statement, no doubt, prompted by dispatches from (the then) U.S. Moving at unprecedented speed, the hurricane raced toward Long Island and New England. He carefully reviewed the weather charts, and he immediately recognized the danger this storm posed for Long Island, NY and southern New England. ** such as the “Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635,” which crossed southeastern New England and was regarded by some as New England’s most catastrophic weather disaster. *** In the northern hemisphere,  a hurricane’s winds to the right of the storm’s eye are generally much higher because overall wind speeds are the combined total of the storm’s forward speed and the wind speed of the circulation itself. Over the years, many short film clips and documentaries#, including one shown on PBS, entitled The Hurricane of ‘38, were done about the storm. On its rampage through Long Island and New England, the … He concluded that the storm would be squeezed between a high-pressure area located to the west and a high-pressure area to the east, and that it would be forced to ride up a trough of low pressure into New England. Roaring winds snapped the stately white steeples of New England’s churches like matchsticks and picked orchards clean of ripened apples before finally plucking the trees themselves out of the ground. See our Privacy Policy and Third Party Partners to learn more about the use of data and your rights. A noon meeting was called and Pierce presented his conclusion, but he was overruled by … Except for Chinnecock, all the other inlets filled up with wrecked cars, broken trees, structural debris, and millions of tons of sand. His family moved to the southwestern Arkansas city of Hampton when he was just a few months old. Weather Bureau of two fronts forcing a hurricane northward toward New England. As dawn broke over the New England coast on September 21, 1938, the rising sun burned away the soft morning fog and left behind wispy clouds and hopes for one final beach day in summer’s fleeting hours. The first was that, by coincidence, as late as the very morning of the hurricane’s landfall, a New York Times editorial, entitled Hurricane, gave the Bureau high praise for its forecasting prowess: “Every year an average of three such whirlwinds sweep the tropical North Atlantic between June and November. See our, Read a limited number of articles each month, You consent to the use of cookies and tracking by us and third parties to provide you with personalized ads, Unlimited access to washingtonpost.com on any device, Unlimited access to all Washington Post apps, No on-site advertising or third-party ad tracking. By 10 a.m., the Weather Bureau’s Washington, D.C. station had downgraded the hurricane to a tropical storm, and nearly all of its forecasters expected the cyclone to follow the well-worn storm track and curve harmlessly away from the densely populated Northeast. But the chief of forecasting scoffed at Charles Pierce’s prediction. By that time, the storm was racing northward at forward speeds of up to 70 mph. Like an incoming tide obliterating children’s sand castles, the sea had swallowed beachfront houses whole and left no remnants. In one of the other documentaries, members of the Geoffrey Moore family, of Napatree Point, RI, tell a harrowing tale: Catherine Moore: “At the height of the storm, my father was trying to hold back the wind and rain from coming through the front door, but finally gave up, when it became apparent that he was eventually trying to hold back the ocean.”. At noon on September 21, 1938, a young meteorologist warned the U.S. Weather Bureau, which would echo those same words for more than another 24 hours. The hurricane left behind a swath of destruction hundreds of miles inland as its eye traveled up the Connecticut River valley into Massachusetts and Vermont. The second reason that the Bureau’s “fatal error” was so remarkable was that just five years earlier, as described in my recent post, when the Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane struck the mid-Atlantic on August 23, 1933, the forecast had been near perfect, preparing the public for widespread devastation. Steamships and bathing pavilions were stranded in the middle of roads. The new European data protection law requires us to inform you of the following before you use our website: We use cookies and other technologies to customize your experience, perform analytics and deliver personalized advertising on our sites, apps and newsletters and across the Internet based on your interests.