HURRICANES INTO NEW ENGLAND — BROOKS 247 



tainly indicated by the record from a 3-cup anemometer. The veloc- 

 ity (corrected by Weather Bureau tables) was 186 miles an hour, with 

 an uncertainty, however, of 30 or 40 miles an hour. At Mount Wachu- 

 sett also the wind showed a considerably augmented velocity as it 

 flowed over the mountain. Similarly, Mount Washington, even though 

 the storm had weakened somewhat when it reached northern New 

 England, experienced winds with hourly velocities in excess of 118 

 miles and measured gust velocities of as much as 163 miles an hour, 

 and later, a velocity of about 190 miles an hour surmised from the 

 increase in pressure fluctuations inside the building.^^ The wind 

 was so violent that it blew down a long section of the trestle of the 

 Mount Washington cog railway, including Jacob's Ladder, and dam- 

 aged half a mile of track and cut curving swaths in the forest 

 beyond. 



Along the south coast the wind velocity is reported to have been 

 more than 100 miles an hour at several points from Fall River to 

 New London. It was estimated to have reached 120 miles an hour 

 at the Weather Bureau's airways station on Fishers Island, near 

 New London, after the weather tower had blown down. In Cam- 

 bridge a velocity of more than 100 miles an hour was recorded 5 

 times by a bridled anemometer. Gusts of 75 miles or more an hour 

 were recorded 76 times in 4 hours, and 48 of these came in a single 

 hour. 



On the west side of the storm the increase in wind velocity owing 

 to the western pressure gradient was moderate and amounted to 

 about 20 miles an hour. Consequently, there was no great damage 

 except by flood from the great rains there. The extreme velocities 

 even on such exposed points as the tops of skyscrapers were not more 

 than 90 miles an hour in New York City, except for the Empire 

 State Building (1,248 feet), where the maximum gust velocity was 

 120 miles an hour. At Central Park the extreme was 60, and in 

 the Bronx 78. 



The hurricane had a central eye of considerable diameter. Over 

 Long Island it extended at least 43 miles from a point west of Brent- 

 wood, where for 50 minutes there was "calm," partly without enough 

 wind to blow out a match, to Mattituck, where a calm of 5 minutes 

 was reported. As the eye moved over the Connecticut coast, there 

 was a decrease in wind velocity extending from somewhere west 

 of Fairfield to Saybrook, a distance of 48 miles. The calmest point, 

 or center of rotation of the wind with respect to the earth's sur- 

 face, was necessarily on the western margin of the inner edge of 

 the vortex, where the rotary velocity southward just balanced the 

 forward velocity northward. The most destructive winds necessarily 



^ Further details in Moant Washington Obs. News Bull. No. 4, pp. 19-20, December 1838. 



