England, and readable signals had been sent over a span of two hundred
miles. No one then could foresee the strange roles that this remarkable
invention would play in storm hunting but it was obvious that messages
could be sent across long distances between ships at sea and from ship
to shore. Already wireless had been used successfully between British
war vessels on maneuvers. Actually, it was destined to be a powerful
ally of the men who searched for hurricanes and reported their progress,
but eventually this trend reversed itself and radio was the cause of
tropical storms being found and then lost again in critical
circumstances.
The spread of wireless across the oceans began while the American people
still had vividly in mind the most terrible hurricane disaster in the
history of the United States. The nation had been shocked by news of a
"tidal wave" which had virtually destroyed Galveston, Texas, on the
night of September 8, 1900, and killed more than six thousand of its
citizens. Really it was not a tidal wave but a West Indian hurricane of
almost irresistible force which had raised the tide to heights never
known before and then topped it with an enormous storm wave as the
center struck the low-lying island.
There was good reason to expect a disaster of this kind. A number of bad
hurricanes had hit Galveston in the nineteenth century. The first of
which we have any reliable record struck the island in 1818, when it was
nothing more than a rendezvous for pirates, principally the notorious
Jean Lafitte. It is known that he was in full possession there in 1817,
and it was rumored that he and his pirate crews were caught in the
hurricane of 1818 and had four of their vessels sunk or driven on shore.
All along the Texas Coast, the inhabitants always have worried about
hurricanes and they have plenty of reason. Whole settlements have been
destroyed by wind and wave. One case deserves special mention. After the
middle of the century, there had been a thriving town named Indianola in
the coastal region southwest of Galveston. The town gave promise then of
being the principal competitor of the island city for the commerce of
the State of Texas. But in September, 1875, a West Indian hurricane took
a slow westward course through the Caribbean Sea and the Gulf of Mexico,
and struck the Coast near Indianola. Vicious winds prostrated the
buildings while enormous waves swept through the streets, drowning a
large share of the population.
Courageous citizens rebuilt the town and for more than ten years it
prospered. Then in August, 1886, a bigger hurricane ravaged the town and
the countryside and literally wiped the place out of existence. The
survivors deserted the site and after a few days nothing was left to
mark the spot except sand, bushes and the wrecks of houses and
carriages, a litter of personal property, and a great many dead animals.
After the hurricane of 1875, the Signal Corps had established a weather
station at Indianola, and in the storm of 1886 the building fell in,
overturning a lamp in the office and setting fire to the fallen timbers.
The observer tried to escape but was drowned in the street.
Both of these hurricanes caused much damage at Galveston, for the island
was caught in the dangerous sector on the right of the center in both
cases. And it was natural that when, on September 8, 1900, the winds
began to increase and the tide rose above the ordinary marks at
Galveston, the citizens became alarmed, expecting a repetition of the
big blows of 1875 and 1886, which were still being mentioned in August
and September every year when the Gulf became rough and gusty northeast
winds tugged at the palm trees and oleanders.
But on September 8 the wind kept on rising and the tide crept above any
previous records. The weather observers feared the worst and dispatched
a telegram to Washington, telling about the heavy storm swells flooding
the lower parts of the city and adding, "Such high water with opposing
winds never seen before." It was not altogether unexpected. Beginning on
September 4, the hurricane had been tracked across Cuba and into the
Gulf toward the Texas Coast, but this rise of the sea was more than the
observers had bargained for.
By noon, the wind and sea were much worse, the fall of the barometer was
ominous, and the Signal Corps observers, two brothers named Isaac and
Joe Cline, took turns going out to the beach and reporting to
Washington. At 4:00 P.M., all communications failed. Isaac found the
water waist deep around his home and the wreckage of beach homes
battered by waves was flying through the streets. At 6:30, Joe, who had
come to the south end of the city to view the Gulf, joined his brother
and found the water neck deep in the streets and roofs of houses and
timbers flying overhead after being tossed into the air by giant waves.
As the peril grew, fifty neighbors gathered for refuge in the Cline home
because it was stronger than others in that part of the city.
At 6:30, in the weather office, one of the assistant observers, Joe
Blagden, looked first at the steep downward curve on the recording
barometer and then noted that the wind register had failed as the gale
rose to one hundred miles an hour. To repair the gauge, he climbed to
the roof and crawled out, holding on tightly in the gusts and edging
forward in the lulls. Reaching the instrument support, he saw that the
wind gauge had been blown away, so he crawled down from the roof, after
taking one brief, horrified look over the stricken city.
There was no longer any island--just buildings protruding from the Gulf,
with the mainland miles away. Down the street filled with surging water,
the spire of a church bent in the wind and then let go as the tower
collapsed. The side of a brick building crumbled. As each terrible gust
held sway for a few moments, the air was full of debris. The top story
of a brick building was sheared off. The scene was like that caused by
the destructive blasts at the center of a tornado but, instead of the
minute or two of the twister, it lasted for hours. Darkness, under low
racing storm clouds, swiftly closed over the city in the deafening roar
of giant winds and the crash of broken buildings. The frightened
observers saw that the right front sector of the hurricane was bearing
down on the island.
Out at the beach, block after block of houses, high-raised to keep them
above the tide marks of previous storms, had been swept into the center
of the city and were being used as battering rams to destroy succeeding
blocks, until a great pile of wreckage held against the mountainous
waves. After an hour or two that seemed like an eternity, the hurricane
center began crossing the western end of the island, and the city on the
eastern end was swept by enormous seas which brought the water level to
twenty feet behind the dam of wrecked houses. Everything floated, many
frame buildings, or what was left of them, being carried out into the
Gulf.
The Cline house disintegrated and more than thirty people in it drowned,
among them Isaac's wife. The others drifted on wreckage, rising and
falling with huge waves and trying desperately to hold timbers between
them and the wind, to ward off flying boards, slate, and shingles. One
woman, seeing her home was giving way to the wind and going down in the
water, fastened her baby to the roof by hammering a big nail through one
of his wrists. He survived. How many drowned or were killed in that
awful night was never known. The estimates finally rose above six
thousand. Doubt about the number was due to the presence of many summer
visitors at the beaches and, besides, there was no accurate check on the
missing, partly because the cemetery was washed out and the recently
buried dead were confused with the bodies of storm victims. The
aftermath was horrible beyond description.
Galveston had been on the right edge of the hurricane center. If the
city had been equally close to the center on the left side, the
destruction of wind and waves would have been bad, but nothing like that
actually experienced. On the left side--that is, left when looking
forward along the line of progress--the tide would have fallen rapidly
as the center passed and the gales would have lacked the peak velocities
so damaging to brick buildings and other structures which had withstood
previous hurricanes. Here was a sharp challenge to the storm hunters. To
tell in advance how devastating the hurricane might be, they would have
to be able to predict its path with sufficient accuracy to say with some
assurance whether the center would pass to the left or right of a
coastal city.
This case shows how hard it was to make predictions without radio.
During the approach of the Galveston hurricane, the storm hunters knew
the position of its center only when it crossed Cuba and again when it
struck the Texas Coast. While it was in the Gulf, weather reports from
coastal points indicated that there was a hurricane outside, moving
westward, but the winds, clouds, tides, and waves at those points would
have been about the same with a big storm far out over the water as with
a small storm close to land. Soon after the Galveston disaster there was
a growing hope that wireless messages from ships at sea would provide
this vital information in time for adequate warnings.
Progress in the use of wireless at sea really was fast, although it
seemed very slow to the storm hunters at the time. The first
ocean-weather report to the Weather Bureau was received from the
Steamship _New York_, in the western Atlantic, on December 3, 1905. It
was not until August 26, 1909, that a vessel at sea reported from the
inside of a hurricane. It was the Steamship _Cartago_, near the Coast of
Yucatan. The master estimated the winds at one hundred miles an hour.
This big storm struck the Mexican Coast on August 28, drowned fifteen
hundred people and created alarming tides and very rough seas all along
the Texas Coast. Thousands of people at Galveston and at many other
points between there and Brownsville stood on the Gulf front and watched
the tremendous waves breaking on the beaches.
Gradually the number of weather reports by radio increased and the work
of the storm hunters improved. World War I and enemy submarines stopped
the messages from ships temporarily, but after 1919 weather maps were
extended over the oceans. Other countries co-operated in the exchange of
messages and the centers of storms were spotted, even when far out of
range of the nearest coast or island. Cautionary warnings were sent to
vessels in the line of advance. By this means, the service of the storm
hunters was of extreme value in the safety of life and property afloat
as well as on shore.
By 1930 another trouble had developed serious proportions as a
consequence of this efficiency in the issuance of warnings. Vessel
masters soon learned that it was dangerous to be caught in the predicted
path of a hurricane, and when a warning was received by radio, they
steamed out of the line of peril as quickly as possible. Thus, as the
storm advanced, fewer and fewer ships were in a position to make useful
reports and in a day or two the hurricane was said to be "lost," that
is, there were too few reports to spot the center accurately, or in some
cases there were no reports at all. The storm hunters could only place
it vaguely somewhere in a large ocean area. When it is impossible to
track the center of a hurricane accurately, it is impossible also to
issue accurate warnings.
In 1926, a hurricane crossed the Atlantic from the Cape Verde Islands to
the Bahamas and threatened southern Florida. After it left the latter
islands, weather reports from ships became scarce and the center was too
close to the coast for safety when hurricane warnings were issued,
although everybody in southern Florida knew that there was a severe
storm outside. More than one hundred lives were lost in Miami and
property damage reached one hundred million dollars. In 1928, another
big hurricane started in the vicinity of the Cape Verdes, swept across
the Atlantic, and devastated Puerto Rico and parts of southern Florida.
Loss of life was placed at three hundred in Puerto Rico and at two
thousand in Florida, mostly in the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee.
In these years and up to 1932, several hurricanes were "lost" in the
Gulf of Mexico and citizens of the coastal areas began making demands
for a storm patrol. They wanted the U. S. Coast Guard to send cutters
out to search for disturbances or explore their interiors and send
information by radio to the Weather Bureau. There was opposition from
the forecasters--they didn't know what they would do with the cutters.
If they had enough ship reports to know where to send the cutters, they
would not need the latters' reports, and if they had no reports, they
would not know where to send the vessels. Besides, it was the
government's business to keep ships out of storms--not to send them
deliberately into danger.
The season of 1933 established an all-time record of twenty-one tropical
storms in the West Indian region. Many of them reached the Gulf States
or the South Atlantic Coast and the controversy about sending ships into
hurricanes was resumed, resulting in legislation containing the
authority, but President Roosevelt vetoed it. By 1937 the criticism of
the warnings and the arguments about Coast Guard cutters began again.
This time it involved Senators and Congressmen from Gulf States and
finally the White House was embroiled.
In August, 1937, a delegation of citizens came to Washington and brought
their complaints direct to the White House. The President arranged a
conference so that the storm hunters, Coast Guard officials and others
could explain again why vessels should not go out into the Gulf of
Mexico to get data when the presence of a hurricane was suspected.
Actually, ships were being saved by the warnings which kept them out of
danger, and the criticism was based on fear of hurricanes rather than
any deficiency of the warnings with respect to the coastal areas.
When the conference was held at the White House, the President was busy
with other matters and James Roosevelt presided. The President had given
him a note to the effect that he should receive the delegation in a most
pleasant manner but that it would be dangerous and fruitless to try to
send Coast Guard vessels into hurricanes.
The President's note to his son said in part:
"Make it clear that I would veto the bill again and that instead of a
hurricane patrol the safest and cheapest thing would be a study of
hurricanes from all of the given points on land and around the Gulf of
Mexico. This might involve sending special study groups to points in
Mexico, such as Tampico, Valparaiso, Tehuantepec, Yucatan, Campeche,
also to the west end of Cuba and possibly to some of the smaller islands
in the region. What the Congressmen and others in Texas want is study
and information and it is my thought that this can be done more cheaply
and much more safely on land instead of sending a ship into the middle
of a hurricane."
The delegation gathered in an outer office at the White House. It
happened that the Coast Guard had a new Commandant, Admiral Waesche, who
had not been advised of the views of the White House, the Coast Guard,
and the Weather Bureau. In the few minutes before the conference
started, there was no opportunity to inform the Admiral, for he was
engaged in conversation with a group of Senators and Congressmen. As
soon as the conferees were assembled, James Roosevelt called on the
Admiral to speak first. To the amazement of all present, he indorsed the
idea in full and promised to send cutters out in the Gulf whenever a
request was received from the Weather Bureau. Nobody knew what to do
next, so James adjourned the conference, and after everybody had shaken
hands and departed, he went back to his father to explain what had
happened.
Thus began a brief period of hunting hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico
with Coast Guard cutters. During the next two seasons, the Weather
Bureau forecasters notified the Coast Guard when observations were
needed. In each instance a cutter left port in accordance with the
agreement, but as soon as the vessel was in the open Gulf the master was
in supreme command and he would not deliberately put his ship and crew
in jeopardy. Cutters went out in a few cases, but most of the
disturbances to be reconnoitered were crossing the southern Gulf, out of
range of merchantmen on routes to Gulf ports. In sailing directly toward
the center under these conditions, the Coast Guard commander would have
been traveling into the most dangerous sector, and the distance he could
make good in a day in rough water could not have been much larger than
the normal travel of a tropical storm, certainly not a safe margin.
Irate citizens complained to Washington, first, that the Weather Bureau
refused to call on the Coast Guard for observations; and, second, that
the Coast Guard refused to carry out the Weather Bureau's instructions.
After two or three years, no special information of any particular value
was obtained and the scheme was forgotten.
In accordance with the ideas expressed by President Roosevelt, but
without any support from Congress, some study groups and other special
arrangements secured useful results on coasts and islands, but it was
obvious after 1940 that automatic instruments for exploration of the
upper atmosphere and reconnaissance by aircraft offered the best
prospects for improvement in the service.
The most destructive hurricane during this period devastated large areas
of Long Island and New England in September, 1938, taking six hundred
lives and destroying property valued at about a third of a billion
dollars. This event aroused general criticism of the storm hunters for
two reasons. First, this disturbance, while it was in the West Indies
and during its course as far as Hatteras, behaved like others of great
intensity, but from that point northward its forward motion was without
precedent. During the day when it passed into New England, its
progressive motion exceeded fifty miles an hour, hence little time
remained for the issue of warnings after its increased rapidity of
motion was detected. Second, the people were absorbed in news of
negotiations in Europe to prevent the outbreak of a world war, and storm
news on the radio was largely suppressed to make way for reports of the
European crisis.
Here it might be said that the storm hunters lost another battle, but it
is probable that the loss of life in this hurricane would have exceeded
that at Galveston in 1900 if there had been no real improvement in the
warning service in the meantime.
_6._ THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE
"_--the whirlwind's heart of peace._"
--Tennyson
After the White House conference in 1937 about sending ships into
hurricanes, some of the Weather Bureau forecasters expressed the idea
that the best method of tracking hurricanes would be by airplane. What
they had in mind was flying around the edge of the storm and getting
three or more bearings from which the location of the center could be
accurately estimated. Nothing came of the idea at the time but after
World War II broke out in Europe, the talk about use of planes
increased. It was the Weather Bureau's plan to contract with commercial
flyers to go out and get the observations on request from the
forecasters. But no one seriously considered sending planes into the
centers of hurricanes. No one knew what would happen to the plane. There
was no very definite information as to what the flyer would encounter in
the upper layers in the region around the center.
Of course, it was known that at the surface of the earth or the sea
there was a small calm region in the center--an oddity in the weather,
for no other kind of large storm has such a center. The tornado may
have, but it is a very small storm in comparison with a hurricane. Its
writhing, twisting funnel at the vortex is hollow, according to the
testimony of a few men who have looked up into it and lived to tell
about it. In the tropical storm, however, nothing was known about the
central winds in the upper levels. There was no proof that strong winds
did not blow outward from the center up there and a plane would be
thrown into the ring of powerful winds around the eye. The only way to
find out was to fly into it and have a look, but there was no one at the
moment who wanted to venture into it.
On the outer fringes of the hurricane, where light, gusty winds blew
across deep ocean waters, stirred at the surface by giant sea swells,
the hurricane hunters were fairly well satisfied with their findings. In
the middle regions, where deluges of rain slanted through raging winds
and low-flying clouds, the grim fact was that they knew amazingly little
about what was going on in the upper layers. Their balloons sent up to
explore the racing winds above were lost in thick clouds before they had
risen more than a few hundred feet.
On beyond, somewhere in that last inner third of the whirlwind, the
increasing gales rose to a deadly peak and torrents of rain merged with
the spindrift of mountainous wave crests to blot out the view of the
observer. Within this whirling ring of air and water lay the vortex.
When the mariner entered, sometimes slowly, but more often suddenly, the
wind and rain ceased and usually there would be no violence except the
rise and fall of the sea surface, like a boiling pot on a scale which
was huge in fact but small in proportion to the extent of the storm
itself. The entire whirling body of air would likely be bigger than the
state of Ohio; the calm central region might be the size of the city of
Columbus.
Here in this inner third were the mysteries. Where could all this air
go--streaming so violently around and in toward that mysterious center
but never getting there? It must go up, the storm hunters argued, for
what else could produce all this tremendous rainfall if not the upward
rush of moist air to be cooled in the upper levels? And then, why no
rain or wind in the central region? Some argued that the air must
descend in the vortex, growing warmer and dry in descent, but why the
descent? And finally, if the air was moving upward in all this vast area
outside the calm center, what finally became of it?
Even if the storm hunters were unable to answer these questions, they
could render a service of enormous value if they could track the storm
and predict its movements. But they knew that the only sure way to track
a hurricane over the ocean was to find its center and follow it
persistently and accurately from day to day. Tests had shown that it was
not practical to send ships into the storm to find its center and report
by radio. Ships couldn't move fast enough. If the storm hunters had
known enough about it, they might have concluded that a plane could
enter the storm in the least dangerous sector and find its way swiftly
to the calm center through some upper level without being hurled into
the angry sea. If it reached the center of the vortex--usually called
the "eye of the hurricane"--the navigator might be able to see the sky
and the sun by day, the stars by night. Here the pilot might be able to
figure out his position, as an ocean-going vessel does on some
occasions, and that would be the location of the storm to be placed on
the charts of the storm hunters in the weather office. But nobody took
it seriously until after the United States got into the Second World
War.
When the request for funds to hire commercial flyers in hurricane
emergencies was presented to the Bureau of the Budget, the examiners
asked why the Weather Bureau didn't try to get the co-operation of the
Army and Navy. Why couldn't they have their pilots carry out the flights
as needed? There was some talk about it in 1942, but at that time there
were no experienced Army or Navy pilots to spare.