How did they get accurate hurricane stats in 1935?

[Raebie]

Just wondering. Weren't the methods pretty crude? How did they calculate pressure & windspeed back then?

[Mac]

Barometers. And barometers. And more barometers.

Intensity for storms that old are merely estimates based upon barometric pressures and damage assessment. There's no sure way to tell how strong they actually were other than that.

[NCHurricane]

I know with the Great Cane in '35 the only pressure reading they got was from its pass over the Keys. As far as wind speed <edit> when it wasn't over land</edit>, I'll assume they got readings from ships.

Any help from someone more knowledgable?

Chuck
http://www.nchurricane.com

[baygirl_1]

I'm not sure how OFFICIAL this is but I can report wat my parents told us about a Cat 4 hurricane that hit Florida in Sept. 1945. They were both in the Air Force (Army Air Corps) and were stationed in South Florida at the time. They rode it out off base with some local friends. One of these friends was a retired ship captain. My mother said he kept striking matches to read this huge barometer he brought with him. She was ready to kill him because he kept telling them, "It's coming... it's coming." When my Yankee mother protested that it must be already here, he would growl at her! My father, who was the original weather fan in the family, took down all the info from the ship captain about lowest reading, time, etc. for the base's post-storm report.

[THead]

Barometer was invented in the 1600's, dunno how accurate they were then, heh.

BAROMETER
A barometer is a device that measures air (barometric) pressure. It measures the weight of the column of air that extends from the instrument to the top of the atmosphere. There are two types of barometers commonly used today, mercury and aneroid (meaning "fluidless"). Earlier water barometers (also known as "storm glasses") date from the 17th century. The mercury barometer was invented by the Italian physicist Evangelista Torricelli (1608 - 1647), a pupil of Galileo, in 1643. Torricelli inverted a glass tube filled with mercury into another container of mercury; the mercury in the tube "weighs" the air in the atmosphere above the tube. The aneroid barometer (using a spring balance instead of a liquid) was invented by the French scientist Lucien Vidie in 1843.

http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/indexb.shtml

[Raebie]

Yeah, I know about the barometer. But it is abit different from holding an instrument at a distance vs dropping instrumentation into the eye of a storm.

I was just curious. The stories on this thread are facscinating. More if you have them!

[Snowzealot]

Great question. Before we started sending planes in hurricanes, how did we know how strong these hurricanes were when they were out to sea? I doubt we were sending planes into hurricanes before 1930 or so, and I doubt a ship would be anywhere near a Category 2 or higher hurricane to measure pressure and wind speed. I only ask because it seems like experts discuss pre-1950 hurricane statistics like they are as all-encompassing and authoritative as modern statistics.

[MGC]

They were measured just like Mac said. If I recall, the 35 hurricane was measured by a ship that had been pushed ashore and the crew read the barometer in the eye.....MGC