NEW ENGLAND HURRICANE — BROOKS AND CHAPMAN 245 



heavier along the south shore of Connecticut, and decreased more or 

 less uniformly northeastward to Maine. They continued, intermit- 

 tently, through the following 48 hours, extending both northward and 

 northeastward into Canada, much less uniformly, and giving no indi- 

 cation of the future course of the hurricane. 



The cyclonic "wringer" produced the usual hurricane rains. But in 

 a rapidly moving whirl the convergence and consequent ascent and 

 resulting rainfall are much the greatest in the left front quadrant, 

 especially when this alone of the whirl is over land, whereas the right 

 or "dangerous" quadrant receives hardly any. For instance, the hurri- 

 cane rainfall at Hartford, on the left of the track, was 4.3 inches, 

 whereas at Nantucket, about the same distance to the right, it was 0.11 

 inch. Providence, nearer the center, but still to the left, got 4.7 inches, 

 of which 3y± came in 2 hours, with a southeast wind averaging 34 

 miles an hour. In the 1938 hurricane also, the precipitation on the 

 left of the track was very heavy, in marked contrast with negligible 

 rainfall on the right. 



Hurricane tides, which are a great danger on the coast and some 

 miles up from the mouths of rivers, were not very serious in 1944, 

 because the arrival of the storm on the south coast almost coincided 

 with low tide. Increases in height that can be attributed directly to 

 the hurricane are, approximately: Boston, 2.5 feet; Woods Hole, 7 

 feet ; Newport, 8 feet ; Providence, 9 feet ; New London, 6 feet. 11 Maxi- 

 mum tides (normal high tide plus hurricane tide) during the 1938 

 hurricane were: Sandy Hook, 8.2 feet; along the Connecticut coast 

 and shore of Narragansett and Buzzards Bays, 12 to 25 feet; Point 

 Judith, 18 feet; Providence, 17.6 feet; Fairhaven, estimated 25 feet; 

 Fall River, estimated 18 feet. 12 



Much more damage was done by the surf than by the wind, because 

 of the reach of nearly a thousand miles from the position of the storm 

 off Florida to the Long Island and southern New England coast. 

 Thanks to the long advance warning of the Weather Bureau, small 

 craft and most other shipping had had time to seek shelter. Not all 

 vessels, however, could do so. The Vineyard Sound lightship found- 

 ered at her post, with a loss of 12 lives. She was later located in 11 

 fathoms of water, the mooring chains intact, at a considerable distance 

 from her Cuttyhunk station. Evidence of the force of the surf is 

 found in the diver's report: masts and funnel were sheared off flush 

 with the deck. 



The American Red Cross estimates the havoc wrought by the 1944 

 storm between North Carolina and Massachusetts as follows: 46 

 persons killed and 338 injured, 921 houses destroyed and 24,168 



11 Courtesy of the D. S. Coast and Geodetic Survey. 



u Tannehill, I. R., Hurricanes : Their nature and history, 5th ed., p. 43, Princeton, 

 1944. 



