THE NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE OF SEPTEMBER 1944 » 



By Charles F. Brooks and Conrad Chapman 



Harvard University 

 Blue Rill Meteorological Ooservatory, Milton, Mass. 



A great hurricane in the Puerto Rico-Bahamas region is always 

 a menace to New England. If the storm, instead of striking inland or 

 recurving out to sea in the usual way, heads up the Atlantic Coast 

 with increasing northward velocity, the danger becomes imminent. 

 For this to occur, there must be a broad northward current at heights 

 of 2 to 5 miles and an ample supply of warm, moist air to maintain 

 its energy. 



The 1944 storm developed under general atmospheric conditions 

 not unlike those prevailing at the time of the 1938 hurricane. 2 At 4 

 p. m. (E. W. T.) on September 8 the presence of a tropical disturbance 

 was announced from San Juan, P. R., and on the 9th a badly shaken 

 reconnaissance plane found that it was an intense storm at about 21° 

 N., 60° W., which later reconnaissance proved to be a fully developed 

 hurricane moving west-northwestward. 3 From September 9 to 11, 

 while the storm was slowly approaching the Carolinas (some 1,000 

 miles distant), two prongs of tropical-maritime air were pushing 

 northward, one from the central Gulf coast, carrying a small hurricane 

 with it, the other from the Bahamas, forming a low over Hatteras. 

 Caught between these, a wedge of high pressure over the Appalachians 

 declined during the 12th and 13th. Meantime, the anticyclone that 

 had covered the eastern United States on the 9th joined the Bermuda 

 high and thus built a pressure ridge, 4 favoring on its west side the 

 northward movement over the coastal waters of large volumes of 

 tropical air. 



1 Reprinted by permission, with revisions and additions, from the Geographical Review, 

 vol. 35, January 1945. 



2 Brooks, C. F., Hurricanes into New England, Geogr. Rev., vol. 29, pp. 119-127, 1939. 

 (Reprinted, with revisions, in Ann. Rep. Smithsonian Inst, for 1939, pp. 241-251, 1940.) 



* [Summer, H. C] The North Atlantic hurricane of September 8-16, 1944, on back of 

 Daily Weather Map, Oct. 31, 1944, U. S. Weather Bureau. Washington, and with addition 

 of four photographs of damage at Atlantic City and a chart of the tracks of the hurricanes 

 of 1815 and 1821, in Month. Weather Rev., vol. 72, pp. 187-189, September 1944. (Small- 

 scale maps of the isobars of the storm were published for 11 : 30 p. m. September 13, 

 and 5 : 30 and 11 : 30 a. m. (E. W. T.) September 14 on the back of the Daily Weather 

 Map, October 6, 1945. For reference to map of 6 : 30 p. m. September 14, see footnote 8, 

 below.) This is an extensive discussion with track map and tables, including comparison 

 with the 1938 hurricane. 



* A similar pressure ridge in 1938 is shown in figure 1 of the article cited in footnote 2. 



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