Editor’s note: This op-ed is By Peter Dannenberg, a retired accountant and resident of Cabot. Dannenberg is VTDigger.org’s volunteer copyeditor extraordinaire.
During the evening of September 21, 1938, my wife’s grandmother, Eva May Clough Joyal, huddled at the foot of the stairs with her four children in the house where we live in Cabot. She believed it to be the safest spot, while gale-force winds howled outside, rattling windows. She may have been right; the house emerged unscathed. Some other places in Vermont were not so lucky.
At 2:30 p.m., a hurricane blew ashore at Bayport, Long Island. It was a Category 3 when it hit land. That’s the same strength Katrina had the second time it came ashore. Back then, they didn’t give hurricanes names that make them sound innocuous. Journalists named it the Long Island Express or the New England Hurricane of 1938.
The storm gouged several inlets into the south shore beaches of Long Island. Some of those inlets still exist. The storm surge and pounding surf were strong enough to show up on seismographs in Alaska. In Westhampton, N.Y., the winds swept a movie theater two miles into the Atlantic; the projectionist and 20 patrons drowned.
The monster raced across Long Island Sound into Connecticut and Rhode Island. Church steeples toppled in winds that gusted between 50 and 186 miles per hour, the second-highest winds ever recorded on Earth. The 18 to 25 foot storm surge swept hundreds of shore homes into the sea and sank thousands of boats. In New London, Conn., a fire burned a quarter-mile of the business district. Firefighters battled the blaze in neck-deep water, but it burned out of control until southerly gales shifted to the northwest.
In Rhode Island, winds funneled the tide into Narragansett Bay, straight at downtown Providence. Observers saw what they thought was a fog bank blowing ashore; it was a 44-foot high wall of water. Water rose to almost 14 feet in Providence’s streets. It was quitting time. The water, rising in minutes, swept away people who were leaving their jobs. Several drowned in cars. Waves swept away a lighthouse and its keeper. Rhode Island suffered most of the loss of life; almost 400 died there.
The express raced up the Connecticut River Valley. In Massachusetts, 99 people died. It had already been raining for three days before the hurricane hit. The ground was saturated. Bridges washed away.
In Hartford, the Connecticut River crested at almost 20 feet above flood stage. The flood surrounded Hartford for four miles. Western New England flood levels surpassed records set two and one-half years earlier in a “100-year” flood.
The hurricane flattened forests and apple orchards around Burlington. A train derailed in Castleton. Ocean salt spray splashed Rutland buildings, but Vermont suffered just five deaths. The storm moved on to Quebec by 9 p.m. It petered out somewhere inside the Arctic Circle.
About 700 souls perished. Property damage was around $400 million in 1938 dollars, during the Great Depression. Today that would be closer to $6 billion. Now more people live in New England and massive structures, like airports and nuclear power plants, line the storm’s path.
Modern storm tracking is better. Only a couple ships at sea radioed a warning in 1938. Forecasters thought the storm would pound Florida. When it veered north and missed North Carolina, they breathed a sigh of relief. Hurricanes that get that far either follow the warm Gulf Stream east into the Atlantic Ocean or soon die out in the cold waters off the mid-Atlantic and New England coasts.
The 1938 New England Hurricane didn’t fade away. Its northward speed of 60 mph was double that of a normal hurricane; it traveled up the coastline along a warm low-pressure trough that brought soaking rains to New England in previous days. The forward speed added destructive force to whirling winds. The tempest destroyed or damaged more than 57,000 homes. High pressure in the Atlantic kept it from following the usual path out to sea. Instead, it raced into the Connecticut River Valley, something experienced weather forecasters thought to be impossible.
Experts know many certainties. A 9.0 earthquake followed by a 30-foot tsunami was impossible in Japan—until a few weeks ago. Levees were certain to protect New Orleans. Blowout preventers stop oil spills.
No New England hurricane ever equaled the death, destruction and cost of the 1938 killer. It took months before Vermont could clear some washed-out back roads of downed trees. Maybe there will never be another New England storm that bad. Experts say we would have more warning, but can you protect a radioactive spent fuel pool and the evacuation roads around it when the roof blows off and hurricane-driven rain pelts in at two inches per hour? Do you want to bet your life?
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