13th anniversary hurricane Bob hits New England

[Guest]

Today marks 13 years ago, August 19th, the last hurricane to strike New England. Although August 18th the storm clipped the outer banks of north carolina with high winds, more notably it was today the storm made a direct landfall on Southeast Massachusetts.

Hurricane Bob came ashore with sustained winds up to 100 mph with gusts as high as 129mph recorded in Falmouth, MA at the Chamber of commerce, and many more reports of 100+mph winds. I was in falmouth at the time and I recall quite a bit of destruction to homes at the waterfront due to the 5-8 foot storm surge and high winds. Also there was possibly a tornado about 1/4 mile from my summer home, where there were some 70 trees uprooted in a 2 acre yard. Boats were torn from their mournings and washed up into harbors and bays everywhere.

More info:

http://www.geocities.com/hurricanene/hurricanebob.htm

http://www.erh.noaa.gov/er/box/hurricanebob.htm

[x-y-no]

Yeah, my parents were at our house in Sippewissett for that one, and went up the next week to help clear up the yard.

Our location is pretty sheltered, so we did OK. We did have some flooding of the basement, since we're right by a salt marsh connected to Buzzards Bay.

[WXBUFFJIM]

As bad as that thing was, could you imagine if it hit central or western Long Island??? Far worse potentially. My fear is to see a repeat of the '38 Long Island Express and with today's growing coastal population have it strike as a major hurricane. Back in 1938, there was nothing on Long Island to damage at that time until it made it into the Providence, RI area. Now with today's population boom over Long Island, a major hurricane that strikes Long Island will have to hit a highly urbanized Long Island coast before it does it's job on New England. With Hurricane Bob, we were fortunate in a way.

Jim

[Skywatch_NC]

I had some friends at the time who lived on Block Island, RI...Hurricane Bob gave them a lashing, also.

Eric

[weatherluvr]

Bob wasn't too bad here. The main thing I remember about Bob was that he hit the same day as the attempted Soviet coup on Mikhail Gorbachev, so all the networks were covering that story, and Bob didn't get nearly the coverage that Gloria did, even though it was a stronger storm.

[Guest]

agreed wxbuffJim - also a hurricane Carol which was very similar to the '38 storm (somewhat weaker) hitting central long island then into CT, in todays time, would be extremely bad for a very large area. Carol, I believe, was moving in excess of 40 mph and produced extensive damage to many areas that were largely unpopulated in comparison to today. Carol also was a bit east of the '38 hurricanes path if my memory is correct. The surges from those 2 storms in todays age (obviously the LI express, moving 60+ mph) would be devastating

[califas]

yeah, I was in Newport R.I., when this thing hit. I was stuck on base and it was the very first experience of a hurricane. Oh, and I also went through the blizzard of 89 in CT, that was rough.