Today marks the 75th anniversary of the Hurricane of 1938, a/k/a "The Long Island Express", which roared ashore in southern New England at Milford, CT on September 21, 1938. Peak sustained winds from this historical hurricane hit 121mph at Blue Hill Observatory in Eastern MA, and with a peak gust of 186mph!!! It was Category 3 storm when it smashed into the coast, and it traveled at a speed of 60mph northward into WMass!! Because of its fast forward motion, all of our area received sustained hurricane force winds. Barometric pressure reached an even 28.00" at Middletown, CT, which indicates a very powerful storm. It tracked over southwestern New England, just to the west of the CT River Valley, putting our region on the north and east sides of the storm, where the most powerful winds form (the rainiest sides of hurricanes are to the south and west, like we had with Irene, which is why flooding was the issue with that storm and not wind). Here is a link to an image of the track - washingtonpost/blogs/capital-weather-gang/files/2013/09/new_england_1938_map.gif Here is an excerpt from NOAA on the flooding impacts in CT and Western MA from the storm: "The Connecticut River, in Hartford reached a level of 35.4 feet, which was 19.4 feet above flood stage. Further upstream, in the vicinity of Springfield, Massachusetts, the river rose to 6 to 10 feet above flood stage, causing significant damage. A total of 8,900 homes, cottages and buildings were destroyed, and over 15,000 were damaged by the hurricane. The marine community was devastated. Over 2,600 boats were destroyed, and over 3,300 damaged. Entire fleets were lost in marines and yacht clubs along Narragansett Bay. The hurricane was responsible for 564 deaths and at least 1,700 injuries in Southern New England. Damage to the fishing fleets in Southern New England was catastrophic. A total of 2,605 vessels were destroyed, with 3,369 damaged." If you want to get an idea of what it might have been like, check out some of this footage from Hurricane Charley back in August of 2004 down in western FL. This is mind blowing: youtube/watch?v=unV5KcSrY-I The music is a bit annoying to me, but here is some footage of the actual hurricane in question - youtube/watch?v=7b21g-5YBLs Masslive also has a retrospective that Glenn Yarnell posted on the wall of this page earlier tonight. We dodged big bullets with Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Irene (though that did come with severe flooding impacts, and of course it was a disaster up in VT), but in both of those cases, we did not have anywhere near the kind of wind impacts and damage to contend with. There will be a time when we have to endure another hurricane of the magnitude of the Long Island Express, so preparedness and storm plans are important to have in place for such an event. I will be posting and publishing preparedness tips as well as other weather and storm information by the end of this year and in 2014. Thanks for reading, Dave
Posted on: Sat, 21 Sep 2013 04:56:08 +0000
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