Hurricane #4 of 1896: A Look at a Possible Charley Analog

[donsutherland1]

Not long after midnight on September 22, 1896, a westward-moving tropical depression grew into a tropical storm as it passed in the vicinity of the Leeward Islands. A day later, it was a strong tropical storm with 65 mph winds and 36 hours later, it had become a full-fledged hurricane.

On September 23, Captain E. H. Thompson of the American clipper ship Solitaire recounted of the conditions his ship faced at the fringes of the rising hurricane, “Rain! It never rained harder!” At 7:30 pm, “A heavy puff of wind” dismasted the Solitaire.

By the evening of September 24, the hurricane had grown into a powerful Category 3 storm with sustained winds of 115 mph. It was continuing to track mainly westward but a gradual turn to the west-northwest had commenced.

On September 27, the major hurricane brushed western Cuba with maximum sustained winds of 120 mph while making a sharp turn to the north-northwest and shortly thereafter north and then north-northeast.

Very early Tuesday morning (September 29), the powerful hurricane swept toward the northwestern Florida Peninsula. In its path lay Cedar Keys, a town of some 1,500 persons.

The October 2, 1896 edition of The New York Times reported:

About 4 o’clock in the morning the hurricane, which had been churning the Gulf, left the water and swooped down on Cedar Keys, a town of 1,500 inhabitants about one hundred miles southwest of Jacksonville. The town was swept away and many persons killed and wounded.

After demolishing Cedar Keys, the storm, moving in a northeasterly direction, struck Williston, a village of 400 inhabitants in Levy County…

Leaving Levy County, the hurricane dashed across Alachua County, one of the most populous counties in the State, where a number of persons were killed and many more severely injured…

From Columbia County the hurricane dashed across Duval County, its edge striking near Jacksonville, but doing little damage and causing no loss of life.

A day later, The New York Times had an even more harrowing account of the disaster at Cedar Keys:

It is probable that hundreds of lives were lost in the Florida Keys during Tuesday’s storm. The town of Cedar Keys is a total wreck…

The storm struck the place at 3:30 o’clock on Tuesday morning, and continued for several hours. At 4 a.m., it blew a perfect tornado and suddenly changed to the southeast [wind direction], bringing in a deluge of water, the tide rising two feet higher than in the memorable gale of 1884 [possibly Hurricane #3], which was at the time said to be the severest storm on record.

An immense tidal wave [storm surge] came in from the south, carrying destruction with it. Boats, wharves, and small houses were hurled from the shore and, breaking into fragments, covered the streets with wreckage and rendered them impassable, while the torrents of water rushing through every open space would take the strongest man off his feet. It was this tidal wave that caused the principal loss of life, many houses being swept from their foundations and their inmates drowned.

At this time, the hurricane was accelerating to the north-northeast.

Between 10:00 am and 12:15 pm on September 29, Savannah was “swept” by the cyclone and “Hardly a house…escaped without more or less damage, though there are few comparatively total wrecks.” In addition, at Burroughs, GA “trees were blown down in the woods and roads” and “all the stacks in the rice fields” were flattened.

Coastal Georgia was especially hard-hit. The October 2, 1896 issue of The New York Times revealed:

Reports from the coast are meager. The sea islands along the coast of Georgia and South Carolina has almost a repetition of the storm of 1893 [In 1893, two hurricanes hammered this region: Hurricane #6 and Hurricane #9].

Almost every cottage and cabin in the wake of the storm was destroyed, but the water was not piled upon them, as in 1893; consequently, the suffering was not near so severe.

The storm’s heavy rain and gusty winds rapidly moved north-northeastward. Just before noon, heavy rain was falling in parts of the Mid-Atlantic region.

By evening, a dam near Staunton, VA burst and the lower part of the city was flooded. At Waynesborough, VA, ten miles east of Staunton, Lewis Creek rose 15 feet and some buildings were “wrenched” from their foundations.

From 11 pm on September 29 through midnight, Washington, DC and Baltimore were lashed by high winds. The October 1, 1896 edition of The New York Times reported the following of the storm’s effects in the Nation’s Capital:

It ripped off some of the coping of the White House and laid low most of the historic trees in the White House grounds, including the elm tree which Lincoln planted. This gave the relic fanatics a fruitful field for their operations.

It carried away part of the roof of the State Department, where the official documents are stored, but fortunately left them uninjured. The costly roof of the Patent Office, constructed after the fire there some years ago, was rolled up town and distributed all around the neighborhood. Skylights half an inch thick were remorselessly beaten in. The Naval Observatory, and, in fact, pretty well every other public building, was more or less damaged…

The residence of the French Minister was left roofless, and even the substantially built embassy of Great Britain suffered the loss of the portico, under which the British Ambassador was accustomed to sit Summer evenings and receive his friends…

The devastation wrought among the beautiful trees about the Capitol was heartrending.

The storm swept the waterfront with a violence that has never been exceeded. Not only will nearly every steamboat company have to pay hundreds of dollars for repairs to its vessels, but some of the steamers will not be able to run for a considerable time to come.

At Baltimore, a similar story prevailed. The same edition of the newspaper reported:

The cyclone which has been traveling up the Atlantic coast from the Gulf of Mexico struck here yesterday noon and after a heavy rainfall during the afternoon developed into dangerous proportions at 11 o’clock last night. The wind which had accompanied the storm suddenly gathered with all the fury of a hurricane.

Upon the wharves fell the brunt of this maddened rush of the winds. The direction from which they came caused the water in the harbor to back up above the level of the surrounding streets and flood the cellars of mercantile houses.

Along Pratt Street, from the foot of Gay Street to Centre Market space, the current was more than waist deep, while Light, Calvert, Charles, Cheapside, and the other thoroughfares adjacent to the water on the north side of the harbor were soon filled with swirling currents…

Windows in many houses were smashed, chimneys were toppled over, and some roofs were blown off.

In fact, “almost the entire northern waterfront” was submerged. Worse, the storm “arrived almost simultaneously with the closing of the theaters. Several street car lines were tied up because of damaged trolley wires, and the many belated passengers where drenched while seeking places of shelter or transferring to the more fortunate car lines.”

The Gettysburg National Cemetery was also battered by the storm. “Round Top and Culp’s Hill are a mass of broken trees, and the new iron observatory on Cemetery Ridge was injured. The monument of the Sixty-sixth Ohio Regiment was completely overturned.”

Eastern Pennsylvania was saw high winds and heavy rain late September 29 into early September 30. Of the conditions on September 30, the October 1, 1896 edition of The New York Times observed, “The fury of the tornado [remnants of the hurricane] left Philadelphia to the north and east and took a curving flight through southern Pennsylvania westward… The rain fell in torrents for several hours and mountain ravines were transformed into rivers… Several washouts occurred near Akron, Ohio, on the Pittsburg and Western Railroad, and telegraph wires were prostrated.”

At Towanda, PA, twenty tobacco sheds were blown down.

The same issue of the newspaper reported of conditions at Passaic, NJ:

The storm last night [night of September 29] caused little damage her, but it created great excitement a short while before midnight. The wind caused an electric wire to cross with one of the wires of the fire-alarm system, and the big bell on which alarms are sounded began to strike. At about the same moment the wind blew a ladder on the roof of the Ackerman Company’s lumber mills against the wire running from the engine room to the big whistle on top of the works. The wire drawing tight started the whistle blowing a long blast. The engineer at the electric light works, the whistle of which is also used to sound fire alarms, heard the Ackerman whistle and the alarm bell ringing, and, supposing the Ackerman mills or years were on fire, he opened the big whistle on the works, and that began to sound.

The firemen turned out at once. The bell was not striking any box, so they cast about for the fire. The telephone connections were gone and the service disabled. This made it hard to find where the fire was. The firemen in the hill section of the city hurried about looking for a fire, and, finding none in their section started in hot haste for the other section, believing the flames must be there since they were not in the hill section.

In the meantime the firemen in Dundee had been as prompt, and finding no fire int heir part of the city, started as fast as possible to the relief of the men on the hill section, who, they supposed, were battling with a big blaze. The companies met and consulted, and sent couriers all over the city searching for fire, but found none. The trouble was finally located.

Between 2 and 3 in the morning of September 30, New York City experienced wind gusts of up to 56 mph. Rainfall totaled only 0.25”.

At New Rochelle, the storm “did considerable damage to the pleasure craft at anchor n Echo Bay” and “The water dashed up on the lawn in front of the residence of C. Oliver Iselin at Premium Point. The garden was wrecked, and some of the shrubbery was torn away.”

Cortland, NY “experienced the most severe windstorm in its history” during the morning of September 30. “Houses, barns, and factories were unroofed, electric light, telegraph, and telephone wires were prostrated, and the fire alarm system was crippled badly. Whole orchards were uprooted and hundreds of shade trees. Many persons were terrified. Rain fell in torrents.”

The weather at Syracuse was also particularly violent on the morning of September 30. The October 1, 1896 issue of The New York Times stated, “Great havoc was wrought by the storm…this morning. Buildings were unroofed, chimneys blown down, and trees uprooted. The streets were strewn with broken trees. Street-car travel was delayed, owing to broken wires.

Finally, the storm was last listed as a tropical storm centered at 41.0N 77.5W in central Pennsylvania during the early hours of September 30. Afterward, it was absorbed by a strong system that was centered over Michigan.

Track:
http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1896/4/track.dat

and

<img src= "http://weather.unisys.com/hurricane/atlantic/1896/4/track.gif">

NOTE: Credit for finding this possible analog hurricane goes to Tony-Sacrus.