“But I know ladies by the score

Whose hair, like seaweed, scents the storm;

Long, long before it starts to pour

Their locks assume a baneful form.”

—Hebert

At the end of August, 1954, when the hurricane named “Carol” devastated Long Island and the southern coast of New England, it did a tremendous amount of property damage, principally on the shores of Rhode Island and southeastern Massachusetts. There was sharp criticism of the weathermen and the hurricane hunters. People claimed that the warning came only a few hours ahead of the big winds and the high storm tides. The weathermen answered that there really was no delay on their part in giving out the warning. They said that the hurricane hunters had been tracking Carol for several days and everybody had been warned that it was on the way. The hurricane simply started to move with great rapidity during that final night and there was no way 238 of getting the warning to large numbers of people that early in the morning. It was after daylight when they got out of bed and turned on radio and television.

Of all the criticism, the sharpest and most prolonged was about the name of the hurricane. A newspaper in Massachusetts—the New Bedford Times—ran an editorial saying that it was not appropriate to give a nice name like Carol to a death-dealing and destructive monster of this kind. Other newspapers and many citizens here and there around the country joined in, partly in complaint and partly out of curiosity and the wish to get into the argument. A New Orleans woman wrote to the editor of the New Bedford Times that she would rather a storm would hit her house nameless than to run a chance of having it named after one of her husband’s old girl friends. Other women were incensed because storms had been called by their given names. The weathermen had a good explanation, but not many people seemed to sympathize with them. Persons who suffered losses of property were the most critical, saying that the name Carol gave the impression that the storm was not dangerous and that its winds and tides would not be much out of the ordinary.

The hurricane hunters were amazed by this reaction. Use of names for storms was not new. For a great many years the worst of the world’s storms have been given names, some before they struck with full force, but mostly afterward. Many were named after cities, towns or islands that were devastated. Others had gotten their names from some unusual weather that came with them or from ships that were sunk or damaged. One of them, as already has been related, was named “Kappler’s Hurricane” after a weather officer named Kappler who discovered it.

During the latter part of the nineteenth century, a New Englander, Sidney Perley, collected all the available records 239 of storms and other disasters, together with strange phenomena in New England, starting with a big hurricane in 1635, when there were only a few settlers, and continuing down to 1890. His book, Historic Storms of New England, was published in Salem, in 1891. He listed floods, earthquakes, dark and yellow days, big meteors, eclipses, avalanches, droughts, great gales, tornadoes, hurricanes, and storms of hail and heavy snow. Prominent among them were the “Long Storm” of 1798, the “September Gale” of 1815, and the “Lighthouse Storm” of 1851.

The “Long Storm,” as the name suggests, was of long duration. It began on the seventeenth of November and continued with terrific gales and heavy snow until late on the twenty-first. This violent weather was unprecedented so early in the winter. From Perley’s account it seems that the center of the storm crossed Cape Cod. A great many vessels were lost and there was much suffering among the people.

The “September Gale” of 1815 became famous because of a poem written in later years by Oliver Wendell Holmes, who was six years old at the time of the big gale. Holmes remembered and lamented the loss of his favorite pair of breeches, in part as follows:

“It chanced to be our washing day,

And all our things were drying;

The storm came roaring through the lines,

And set them all a flying;

I saw the sheets and petticoats

Go riding off like witches;

I lost, ah! bitterly I wept,—

I lost my Sunday breeches.”

Holmes entitled the poem The September Gale and so this became the name of the storm. Actually, it was a hurricane 240 quite like those that struck New England in 1938, 1944 and 1954. Years afterward, a New Haven man named Noyes Darling became interested in the storm of 1815 and traced its course by a collection of newspaper accounts from many places and by the logs of ships which had been in the western Atlantic when the hurricane passed. In 1842, he plotted all this information on a map and was able to figure its course. This was rather remarkable, for a study since that time shows that the tracks of hurricanes which do great damage in New England must adhere closely to one path—far enough eastward to clear the land areas as they go northward and far enough westward so that they do not go out into the ocean before they reach the latitude of Nantucket. Those which strike shore to the southward may reach New England but passage over land causes them to lose much of their fury on the way. Darling’s plotted path was correct according to experiences since that time.

The “Lighthouse Storm” of 1851 commenced in the District of Columbia on Sunday, April 13, reached New York on Monday morning, and during the day struck New England. It came at the time of the full moon and so the storm-driven waters joined with the high tides, and the sea, rising over the wharves at Dorchester, Massachusetts, came into the streets to a greater height than had ever been known before. All around the coasts of Massachusetts and New Hampshire there was much property damage. The event which gave the storm its name was the destruction of the lighthouse on Minot’s ledge, at Cohasset, Massachusetts. It was wrecked and swept away. At four o’clock the morning after the storm some of the wreckage was found strewn along the beach. Two young men, assistant light keepers, were killed. Since this was a very dangerous rock and many vessels had been lost there, a new lighthouse was erected at the same point soon afterward.
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One of the most noted storms of the nineteenth century was “Saxby’s Gale,” which caused a great amount of destruction in New Brunswick on October 4, 1869. The amazing fact was that this storm was predicted nearly a year before by a Lieutenant Saxby of the British Navy. In November, 1868, he wrote to the newspapers in London, predicting that the earth would be visited by a storm of unusual violence attended by an extraordinary rise of tide at seven o’clock on the morning of October 5, 1869.

Saxby wrote the following explanation of his forecast to the newspaper:

“I now beg to state with regard to 1869 at 7 A.M. October 5th, the Moon will be at the part of her orbit which is nearest the Earth. Her attraction will be therefore at its maximum force. At noon of the same day the Moon will be on the Earth’s equator, a circumstance which never occurs without marked atmospheric disturbance, and at 2 P.M. of the same day lines drawn from the Earth’s centre would cut the Sun and Moon in the same arc of right ascension (the Moon’s attraction and the Sun’s attraction will therefore be acting in the same direction); in other words, the new moon will be on the Earth’s equator when in perigee, and nothing more threatening can, I say, occur without miracle. The earth it is true will not be in perihelion by some sixteen or seventeen seconds of semidiameter.

“With your permission I will during September next (1869) for the safety of mariners briefly remind your readers of this warning. In the meantime there will be time for the repair of unsafe sea walls and for the circulation of this notice throughout the world.”

It seems that Saxby had made other similar forecasts. Commenting on one of his predictions, a London newspaper, the Standard, said:

“Saxby claims to have been successful in some of his predictions, 242 and he may prove either lucky or clever on the present occasion. As the astronomical effect will operate over the entire globe, it is exceedingly likely there will be a gale of wind and a flood somewhere.”

The extraordinary fact is that a citizen of Halifax, Nova Scotia, disturbed by Saxby’s prediction for October 5, 1869, wrote to the local newspaper the week before:

“I believe that a heavy gale will be encountered here on Tuesday next 5th October beginning perhaps on Monday night or possibly deferred as late as Tuesday night, but between these two periods it seems inevitable. At its greatest force the direction of the wind should be southwest, having commenced at or near south.

“Should Monday the 4th be a warm day for the season an additional guarantee of the coming storm will be given. Roughly speaking the warmer it may be on the 4th, the more violent will be the succeeding storm. Apart from the theory of the Moon’s attraction, as applied to Meteorology—which is disbelieved by many, the experience of any careful observer teaches him to look for a storm at next new moon, and the state of the atmosphere, and consequent weather lately appears to be leading directly not only to this blow next week, but to a succession of gales during next month.”

Actually the fourth began as a warm day in New Brunswick and later in the day the storm became violent, as predicted by the Halifax citizen, named Frederick Allison.

There were high tide and heavy rain at Halifax but the weather in general was a disappointment, for the citizens, after seeing the warning in the newspaper, had made many preparations about the wharves, moving goods to higher floors in warehouses, and anchoring boats out in the stream or securing them with lines in all directions.

Near by in New Brunswick, however, the storm on October 4 was severe. The gale rose to hurricane strength between 243 8:00 and 9:00 P.M. The tide at St. John was above any preceding mark. Vessels broke away from their moorings and some were badly damaged. Buildings were flooded and in St. John and other cities and towns in the area, buildings were demolished or unroofed, tracts of forest trees were uprooted, and cattle were drowned in great numbers.

All of this was rather remarkable as the storm reached its height at about 9:00 P.M. on October 4th, which was actually after midnight by London time and therefore on October 5th. Regardless of these circumstances, this is an instance of a storm that had a name—“Saxby’s Gale”—long before it occurred and for years afterward. Some weathermen thought that it was of tropical origin and had been a hurricane in lower latitudes, but if so, it came overland in its final days, for it was felt at Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and in parts of New England on the third and early on the fourth, with heavy rains and gales in many localities.

A few hurricanes have been named for the peculiar paths they followed. One that was very unusual was the “Loop Hurricane” of October, 1910. It was an intense storm that passed over western Cuba, after which its center described a small loop over the waters between Cuba and Southern Florida. When it finally crossed the coast of western Florida, it caused tides so high that many people had to climb t............