Free Sudden Sea by R.A. Scotti Page B

storm warnings ordered from the Virginia Capes to Atlantic City, N.J., including lower Chesapeake Bay. Northeast winds becoming strong and reaching gale force (39–54 m.p.h.) in the Virginia Capes section Wednesday and southern New Jersey coast late Wednesday afternoon or Wednesday night.
    4:00 A.M. update: Indications are center of hurricane will pass near but slightly off Carolina Capes within next 12 hours attended by dangerous gales and high tides on coast and by hurricane winds ( 75 m.p.h. plus) a short distance off shore. Storm warnings displayed north of Wilmington, N.C., to Atlantic City, N.J. Caution advised ships in path of this severe storm.
    When the D.C. forecasters began tracking the storm about five A.M. , it appeared to be slowing again. Like Norton and Dunn in Jacksonville, they believed it would follow the path of most North Atlantic hurricanes and curve out to sea. At 7:30 A.M. , the system was some 140 miles east-northeast of Cape Hatteras, latitude 35° north, longtitude 73° west. The D.C. night crew downgraded the storm to a tropical disturbance. In their early-morning forecast, they noted only:
“A broad trough of low pressure extends from New England south-southwestward to the tropical disturbance. Pressure remains high from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland and southward and southeastward over the ocean.”
They did not indicate a hurricane on the morning weather map that went out to regional newspapers and radio stations.
    Following their lead, Charles Pierce issued an equally sanguine advisory about ten o’clock:
    Hoist northeast storm warnings 10 A.M. DST north of Atlantic City and south of Block Island, R.I., and hoist southeast storm warnings Block Island to Eastport, Me. Tropical storm approximately central about 75 miles east of Cape Hatteras moving rapidly north-northeast attended by shifting gales over wide area and by winds of hurricane force near center. Northeast or north gales backing to northwest south of Block Island to Hatteras today and southeast or east gales Block Island to Eastport becoming northwest tonight or Thursday morning. Small craft should remain in port until storm passes.
    Through the morning, though, as he computed the statistical data and analyzed the surface charts, Pierce began to question the earlier assumptions. By his reckoning, the storm was east of Norfolk, Virginia, moving rapidly north again and still very much a hurricane. In the upper atmosphere above Washington, southerly winds of forty to fifty miles an hour were blowing. Since the storm was only about three hundred miles southeast, it was probably being pushed by similar winds. If his calculations were correct, the storm would blow on a straight track north from Hatteras. If it stayed on course without dissipating, the first landfall would be Long Island, six hundred miles away.
    Looking back, Pierce would call the Great New England Hurricane “one of the most unusual, and from the viewpoint of the meteorologist, one of the most interesting storms in history. Because of the peculiar temperature and wind distribution in the upper atmosphere, instead of following its normal course, it moved straight northward over what, at that time, was the most densely populated area in the world.” But that was in hindsight. On September 21 he was a junior forecaster, green and unsure, working for an agency that in many ways was stalled in the nineteenth century.
    When the United States established its first official Weather Bureau, the director, Willis L. Moore, complained to Congress that his forecasters were under such intense pressure that they had “the highest rate of insanity of any government agency.” The
Denver Republican
was one source of irritation. The newspaper routinely ran the official Weather Bureau forecast side by side with the predictions of ninety-year-old Oliver P. Wiggins. Wiggins would consult his bum left leg, wounded when he was scouting for Kit Carson, then issue his forecast. Wiggins’s bum