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The Great Hurricane of 1938 - A Retrospective Discussion

September 22nd, 2008

by David Longshore

Sunday, September 21, 2008, was (meteorologically-speaking) a beautiful day over much of the northeastern United States, with clear blue skies, low humidity, calm winds, and warm temperatures.  It was, as they say, a far cry from the same date 70 years earlier, when the Great New England Hurricane (also known as the Long Island Express or the Great Long Island Hurricane) roared its way into the history books as the most deadly and destructive tropical cyclone to have struck the northeastern United States during the last century.  At one time in its existence a Category 5 hurricane of harrowing intensity, the Great New England had faded to a powerful Category 2 or 3 system by the time it gushed across eastern Long Island and into Connecticut and Rhode Island during the early afternoon hours of September 21, 1938.  While tropical storm-force winds, driving rains, and high surf buffeted New York City, nearly 700 people on Long Island and in New England lost their lives; and the hurricane remains on the top-10 list of most expensive tropical cyclone strikes in American history.
Seventy years later, the Great New England Hurricane lives on as a watershed (no pun intended) meteorological event in New York and New England history.  When I was growing up in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, I’d frequently hear people say, “That barn was built from timber dropped in the ‘38 hurricane”; or, “That was the day all my great-grandmother’s washing blew away before she could bring it in.”  There’s no doubt that for several generations of New Yorkers and New Englanders, the 1938 hurricane was a storm of monumental fury - and with good reason they remembered it as such.
But now, a meteorological re-evaluation of the 1938 hurricane is underway and the results could prove surprising for the historical record.  The first question Disaster Central wishes to ask its readers is: was the 1938 hurricane a Category 2 or Category 3 hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale?  And the second, does it really matter either way?

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Posted by David Longshore in Natural Disasters.

David Longshore is the Director of MCNY’s Emergency and Disaster Management MPA Program.

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 6:54 pm and is filed under Natural Disasters. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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