23 Photos Of Devastation After New England Hurricane Of 1938

BuzzFeed ^

[Hojczyk]

CULTURE BUZZ The most destructive hurricane to hit New England in the last two hundred years. Making landfall as a Category 3, the Long Island Express (hurricanes weren't named at the time) killed over 600 people and destroyed more than 57,000 homes

http://www.buzzfeed.com/donnad/x-photos-from-the-devastating-new-england-hurrican

[Hojczyk]

They had this problem in south Florida...they evacuated an area and the storm went someplace else....they finally decided to wait til they had a good track and then issue an evacuation order..

[ClearCase_guy]

My family spent the first week in August on the Outer Banks. We stayed in Avon and went up to Corolla and down to Ocracoke. We had a wonderful time. First time visitor -- had to drive down from New England (took two days) and I don't know if I'd make the trip again, but the OBX was a great spot for a family vacation.

I was really sad to see how hard it got hit by Irene.

[Dick Vomer]

hurricane damage... we'll try and get some National Guardsmen with heavy equipment to pick up the can and clean up the environmental disaster of the toxic fluid on the deck.

the umbrella however is a total loss....

[PGalt]

Thanks for posting, Hojczyk. Very interesting.

[vox_freedom]

Thanks, provides a good reference pt.
57,000 homes destroyed, 600 killed, and a Cat. 3.

[hosepipe]

A CAT-5 going up the east in this way would be devastating..
The tornados would sweep the land.. in some places..

MAybe even a CAT-4....

[wastedyears]

Ping for later.

[wardaddy]

A serious hurricane that came straight out of the western Atlantic with no landfall till mid Long Island...and they of course had little clue what was upon them.

You have to go back to early 1800s (Great September Gale of 1815) to find another storm of similar strength like that to hit NE

Strong storms hitting populated NE are rare...it’s good to be further north in that case

[decimon]

I am so sick of blowhards on here claiming “nothing happened” because NEW YAWK didn’t get washed into the ocean.

Some people have been saying that nothing happened anywhere. Some people have been saying so from the time the storm was in N. Carolina. Despite Irene being about the size of Texas, some people have been saying it was never a hurricane. Some people have been saying it was all hype and for the benefit of Obama or...whatever. Nevermind that Irene was still flooding people out when it reached Vermont. Some people will say anything.

[Publius6961]

some people have been saying it was never a hurricane. Some people have been saying it was all hype and for the benefit of Obama or...whatever.

There certainly is mass confusion on that point.
When it hit North Carolina it was still a Cat 1 briefly, and I have not read about anyone claiming otherwise.

On the second landfall, near NYC, however it's a different story, because by then it had attenuated to a Tropical Storm, although the "mine was worse than yours" crowd are adamant that it was still a Cat 1 hurricane.

If we're going to have definitions, let's not allow the hysterical to manipulate reality.

As states farther north can testify, a Tropical Storm can be just as bad in terms of destruction, if not in lives lost.

[decimon]

Maybe the smartest thing people say about hurricanes is that they are unpredictable. Where I live in New York, we were treated to extra rain as the rain portion of the storm seemed to have a ‘tail’ hanging down. Maybe the same happened up in Vermont where some places really got flooded.

IIRC, the 1938 hurricane had a forward speed of about 60 mph when it reached New York, the highest on record. That made for quite high winds on the right side of the storm and relatively low winds on the left side. And that spared NYC the sort of damage suffered out on Long Island and in coastal New England.

Location, location, location. ;-)

[SunkenCiv]

Ooh, almost a GGG. :’)