242 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 19 39 



parallel to the wind. There were also lanes of destruction where 

 a succession of vicious gusts had plowed into the woods, breaking 

 off the first trees or uprooting them from the sodden ground, thereby 

 opening the then unprotected trees to leeward to the destructive 

 attacks of the subsequent blasts. Some 2.6 billion board feet of 

 timber were thrown down, leaf pulp turned white houses green, 

 and leaves that were not blown to pieces were "scorched" by the 

 beating, desiccating, salty gale. 



There were some 600 lives lost. The American Bed Cross places 

 the deaths at 488, with 100 additional missing and 1,754 injured. 

 The W. P. A. survey 2 places the loss of human life at 682. The 

 Red Cross also finds that 93,122 families suffered more or less serious 

 property losses; that 6,933 summer dwellings, 1,991 other dwellings, 

 and 2,605 boats were destroyed; also 2,369 barns and 7,438 other 

 buildings ; and 75,000 were damaged. One thousand six hundred and 

 seventy-five head of livestock and one-half to three-quarters of a 

 million chickens were killed. Eailroad service between New York 

 and Boston was interrupted for 7 to 14 days while 10,000 men filled 

 1,000 wash-outs, replaced nearly 100 bridges, and removed thousands 

 of obstructions from the tracks, including a number of cottages and 

 30 boats — 1 a fairly large steamer, which remained for 17 days on 

 the track. The air lines carried 1,000 passengers a day. The total 

 property damage is reliably estimated to have been at least $400,- 

 000,000.^ Although the loss of life has been greater in a few other 

 hurricanes, the damage to property in this storm was the greatest 

 that ever occurred in a single storm anywhere in the world. 



Such things had happened before — in 1815 and 1635 — and had been 

 vividly recorded in newspapers, meteorological records, and town 

 chronicles,* and in Sidney Perley's Historic Storms of New England." 

 In fact, Perley describes 10 storms of hurricane intensity in 2^^ cen- 

 turies, and Tannehill lists 8 more, and there have been 4 more in the 

 last 50 years," which makes 5 or 10 New England hurricanes to a 

 century and 1 that is especially fierce and widespread in each century 

 and a half. 



* New England hurricane, a factual, pictorial record. Federal Writers' Project, W. P. A., 

 Boston, 1938. Thi.s is the Largest of a great number of booklets, usually on a particular 

 town, or area, or industry. A partial, briefly annotated list of these, and articles on the 

 hurricane, compiled by Charles Rufus Harte, of New Haven, runs to more than 120 titles. 

 Perhaps the best general illustrated magazine article is by F. B. Colton, The geography 

 of a hurricane . . . Nat. Geogr. Mag., vol. 75, pp. 529-552, 21 figs., April 1939. 



^ Figures from Fierce, Charles H., The meteorological history of the New England hurri- 

 cane of September 21, 1938. Monthly Weather Rev., vol. 67, pp. 237-285, 48 figs., August 

 1939. This is a very comprehensive discussion, including daily pressui"e and wind maps 

 for the 6,000-foot and 10,000-foot levels and isentropic charts, and twice daily to hourly 

 sea-level synoptic charts with air-mass fronts and station details of the weather. 



* Quoted by Walter Channing in New England hurricanes, 1635, 1815, 1938. 16 pp. 

 Boston. 1939. 



8 Salem, Mass., 1891. 



« Tannehill, I. R., list of West Indian hurricanes, in Hurricanes : Their nature and his- 

 tory. Princeton, 1938. 



