The Hurricane of 1938 remains the standard that all storms since are measured against.
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SPRINGFIELD - In retrospect, one can’t help but help but notice the irony in the weather forecast.
On Sept. 20, 1938, the weather box in the top left corner of the Springfield Union, an ancestor to today’s Republican, the region’s forecast was summed up in four words:
“Rain today and possibly tomorrow.”
There would be rain – and lots of it – the following day, Sept. 21, 1938. There would also be flooding and winds stronger than anyone could remember as one of the worst hurricanes to hit the east coast tore through Western Massachusetts.
Before it was finished, the category 3 hurricane, known today as the Hurricane of 1938, would kill hundreds and leave thousands other homeless.
Homes, businesses, roads and railroads were destroyed or damaged, rivers and streams flooded and thousands of trees were uprooted and acres upon acre of crops washed away as the storm cut a swath from Long Island through Connecticut, Western Massachusetts and Vermont before it finally petered out near the Canada border.
The damage was estimated at around $300 million in 1938 dollars. Adjusted for inflation, it would be a little more than $5 billion today.
Seventy-five years later, the one incomprehensible aspect of the storm that remains is this: No one knew it was coming.
Today in the age of satellite images, computer-aided forecasting, and Doppler radar, a storm the size of the Hurricane of 1938 would be tracked for days in advance.
But in 1938, it was a different story.
“It is inconceivable for a hurricane to arrive unannounced like it did in 1938,” said Robert Thompson, meteorologist in charge at the National Weather Service in Taunton.
Back then, forecasts were the result of observation and projecting, and all the observers were projecting the storm would travel along the Carolinas before turning out to sea, as many storms had before it.
.On the day before the storm, the front pages of the Springfield Daily News, the Springfield Daily Republican and the Springfield Union were more concerned with the Massachusetts governor’s race and the growing tensions in Europe.
The Big E was underway, and attendance was described has high despite the steady downpours in the previous two days. The Daily Republican projected that the fair could set an attendance record “if only the exposition gets any kind of break on the weather between now and Saturday.”
No break from the weather would be coming.
By the following day, the Big E fairgrounds were underwater, its wooden grandstand ripped apart, and its Ferris wheel lying on its side.
In Springfield, the South End was flooded and had to be evacuated. The former Hampden county jail on York Street along the river in the South End had to be evacuated. All the prisoners were transported under guard to Springfield College. Portions of the North End were also evacuated as the river came perilously close to breaching the dike along Riverside Road in the Brightwood neighborhood.
On the other side of the river in West Springfield, the dike near Mosely Avenue breached, sending a torrent of water that flooded the surrounding neighborhoods and forced the evacuation of hundreds of residents.
Palmer, Ware, Chicopee and Westfield all suffered heavy flooding.
In Hadley, the dike burst, flooding portions of the town, ruining the onion crop. Police declared martial law.
On the morning of Sept. 21, 1938, the hurricane was 75 miles off the coast of North Carolina, and the National Weather Bureau in Washington, D.C. was forecasting that the storm would veer away from New England and head harmlessly out to sea.
But by the afternoon, the storm, some 500 miles wide, was churning across Long Island, and into Connecticut, Western Massachusetts and Vermont. Hurricanes typically traveled at 10 to 20 mph across the ocean, but this storm was measured traveling north at 70 mph, the fastest forward speed ever recorded by a hurricane.
The Blue Hills Observatory in Boston measured a gust of 186 mph, also a record for a hurricane.
By the time it was done, some 700 people would be killed, more than 55,000 homes damaged or destroyed, and an estimated 250 million trees toppled.
On the Saffir-Simpson Wind Scale, the Hurricane of 1938 was a category 3 hurricane. That means it had sustained winds of 111 to 129 mph, which are strong enough to cause devastating damage to homes, infrastructure and trees.
In the last 400 years, there have only been three Category 3 hurricanes in New England, Thompson said. One was in 1815 and the other was 1635.
Superstorm Sandy in 2011, by comparison, began as a Category 3 when it hit Cuba but it had been reduced to a Category 2, with sustained winds of 96 to 110 mph, by the time it hit New Jersey and New York City,
Thompson said that is possible and even likely that at some time in the future, New England will see another storm comparable to the Hurricane of 1938.
What is not possible is that such a storm will simply drop in unannounced, he said.
In 1938, the National Weather Bureau, a precursor of today’s National Weather Service, compiled its forecasts by observational reports from people in the field or on ships at sea.
The Weather Bureau was tracking the storm as it crossed the Atlantic, but its forecasts believed that by the time it was a few hundred miles off the South Carolina coast it would loop back out over the Atlantic, missing New England as so many other storms had done previously.
It didn’t.
Thompson said weather forecasting technology today makes it possible to track a storm several days before landfall. That was something his contemporaries in 1938 did not have the means to do.
“Today we have satellite imagery, computer models, and a better understanding of the science to see a storm like ’38 as a threat a few days out,” he said. By tracking and projecting its path so far in advance, they can begin warning people with days to spare.
For example, when Sandy approached the Northeast, the airwaves were filled with warnings several days in advance and people were being urged to evacuate the day before.
“The biggest difference is we would be able to see it coming and have alerts and warnings out in advance,” he said. “The 1938 hurricane was fast, intense and powerful, and it was a complete surprise.”
Thompson said technology has turned the issue of warnings a full 180 degrees. It is no longer a case of people being caught unaware by a major storm, but becoming too aware. It has reached a point where the advance notice is so far in advance the people begin to tune out the warning, he said.
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Nick Morganelli Nick Morganelli, meteorologist for Channel 3 Springfield, the media partner for The Republican and Masslive.com, said the hurricane of 1938 happened decades before the development of weather forecasting technology used today.
The first weather satellites were not rolled out into the late 1960s, and the first satellites over the Atlantic in the mid-70s. “That’s the first time we were able to see what was happening,” he said.
Morganelli, who has been a meteorologist for 26 years, remembers ripping weather maps from a Difax machine and thinking it was amazing technology. The maps would be pinned to a wall and strung together and from that the meteorologist would take a stab at predicting weather patterns for the next 47 to 72 hours.
Now at his work area at the station, he has satellite radar, Doppler radar, and interactive radar that allows one to zoom in to the neighborhood level. There’s information from the National Weather Service and other forecasting sites. Morganelli said the data he needs to compile an accurate forecast for up to 10 days in advance at his fingertips.
But having warnings doesn't guarantee that people will listen to them.
Hurricanes are so infrequent in New England “that people are not fazed by the warnings,” Morganelli said.
The last hurricane of any significance around here was Hurricane Bob in 1992, and that was mostly on the eastern end of the state, he said.
But, he said, it doesn't need to be a hurricane to cause major disruptions. Irene in 2010 was a tropical storm when it arrived here, and it caused significant flood damage in parts of Massachusetts and Vermont.
“With hurricanes, we’re not prepared,” Morganelli said. “We’re as unprepared now as we were in 1938.”
Thompson, with the National Weather Service full-time since 1977, said the Hurricane of 1938 remains the standard that all storms since are measured against.
His father was living in Holyoke at the time. “That was the one storm that above all that he remembered,” he said.
“He used to tell me about the continuous noise (from the wind) and seeing trees going down all over the place.”
