246 fassig: hurricanes of west indies 



wind layers, billows, torrents and the like, that, in spite of full 

 speed ahead with reference to the ground, abruptly deprive an 

 aeroplane of a portion of its support, owe their effect to a running 

 of the wind more or less with the machine. 



Both groups are sources of danger to the aeronaut and there- 

 fore he should become well acquainted with the meteorological 

 conditions under which and the places at which they are most 

 likely to occur. But this is a story whose details are beyond 

 the scope of the present article. 



■ 



METEOROLOGY. — Hurricanes of the West Indies and other 

 tropical cyclones. Oliver L. Fassig. Communicated by 

 W. J. Humphreys. To appear as a special Bulletin of the 

 U. S. Weather Bureau. 



An analysis of 135 storms of hurricane force that occurred in 

 the West Indies, as recorded by the U. S. Weather Bureau, from 

 1876 to 1910, shows that there is a well marked path of greatest 

 hurricane frequency which, beginning near the Windward Islands, 

 runs nearly due west across the northern half of the Caribbean 

 Sea to Jamaica, gradually turns northwest, passes thru the 

 Yucatan Channel, recurves in the eastern portion of the Gulf 

 of Mexico, and finally, after crossing the Florida Peninsula, 

 passes out over the North Atlantic with a northeast trend. 



A secondary hurricane path, not so well defined, extends from 

 the northern group of the Windward Islands in a west-north- 

 west direction across the Bahamas and, recurving east of Florida, 

 passes out also northeasterly onto the Atlantic. Tho the Greater 

 Antilles lie between these paths two of them, Porto Rico and 

 Haiti, are comparatively free from the devastating winds near the 

 hurricane centers. The western half of Cuba, however, is crossed 

 in the recurve of a large percentage of the Caribbean storms 

 that belong to the main path. 



From the above descriptions it will be observed that the two 

 storm paths closely coincide with the two branches of the great 

 equatorial current of the North Altantic. 



In both cases the normal path for the entire season resembles 

 a parabola, though the exact path pursued by an individual 



