NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE — BROOKS AND CHAPMAN 237 



On the 13th, at 4 : 30 a. m. (E. W. T.) , the storm was centered near 

 latitude 27.8° N., longitude 74° to 75° W., about 380 miles off Florida, 

 moving northwest at 10 to 12 miles an hour (fig. 1). At 2: 30 a. m. 

 on the 14th it had just passed the point of recurvature and had begun, 

 though still slowly (20 miles per hour), its march northward with 

 the upper current. Seven hours later, now advancing more rapidly 

 (about 30 miles per hour), its center passed close east of Hatteras, 

 where the barometer stood at 27.97 inches (947.2 millibars) and gusts 

 were estimated to reach 140 to 150 miles an hour. 



THE HURRICANE IN FULL FORCE AT CAPE HATTERAS, ITS FIRST 



LANDFALL 



We are indebted to Reverend F. B. Dinwiddie for an exceptionally 

 complete account of the meteorological features of this great hurri- 

 cane as it approached, passed over, and receded from Cape Hatteras. 

 Reverend Dinwiddie deserves great credit for making such a record 

 under the conditions of a storm of such exceptional violence. In view 

 of the fact that the storm reached its first land at Cape Hatteras and 

 was still very much in possession of its full tropical characteristics, 

 these observations seem worth presenting in some detail. They reveal 

 unexpected complexities in the great whirl. 



The storm's approach was observed from Nag's Head, on the outer 

 barrier beach, but its full fury was noted from a less hazardous location 

 at Wanchese, 8 miles to the southwest. The advance edge of the cirri- 

 form overflow from the storm was already in sight at 8 a. m. the 13th, 

 while the center was still 500 miles to the south ; and by noon the sky 

 was half covered with cirrostratus which showed a halo from 12 to 

 5 p. m., when altostratus became dominant. 



Heavy cumulus swelled up here and there during the morning while 

 the sun still shone. A peculiar squall, estimated at 40 miles an hour, 

 came very suddenly at noon, with no lower clouds in the vicinity and 

 no change from the steady south-southeast wind direction. Reverend 

 Dinwiddie rather plausibly wonders if it could have been the result 

 of penetration from the upper air stream in advance of the storm, 



be more nearly correct." With regard to the track of the 1944 storm, observa- 

 tions at Avon, N. C, presented by Rev. F. B. Dinwiddie, where the wind, 

 even on this outermost barrier beach, 10 miles north of Cape Hatteras, went 

 from easterly to westerly via north, as the center passed, indicated that the 

 center was to the east, instead of to the west (cf. Sumner, loc. cit. footnote 3, 

 ch. 1, and Wood, F. B., A flight into the September 1944 hurricane off Cape 

 Henry, Va., Bull. Amer. Meteorol. Soc, vol. 26, p. 154, fig. 2, May 1945). The 

 center must have been close, however, perhaps only 5 or 10 miles away, because 

 the wind became gentle for 1% hours. Farther north, the track published by 

 Sumner and Wood is some 20 miles too far west where it crosses southeastern 

 New England. 



676212—46 16 



