susceptible region were still being made in Washington, having been
begun there in 1878. Weather reports were coming in season from
observers at land stations in the West Indies, mostly by cable. From
many places the cable messages went to Washington via Halifax. Ship's
weather messages came by radio to coastal stations on the Atlantic and
Gulf, and from there to Washington by telegraph. Twice a day these
reports were put on maps and isobars, and pressure centers (highs and
lows) were drawn.
In general, the same system is used today. Arrows show the direction and
force of the wind at each of many points; also the barometer reading,
temperature, cloud data, and other facts are entered. Conditions in the
upper air are shown at a few places where balloon soundings are made. As
the map takes shape, it begins to show the vast sweep of the elements
across the southern United States, Mexico, Central America, and all the
region in and around the Caribbean Sea and the Atlantic. In these
southern regions, the trade winds, coming from the northeast and turning
westward across the islands and the Caribbean, bring good weather to the
edge of the belt of doldrums.
This is the lazy climate of the tropics, in the vast spaces where the
bulge of the earth near the Equator seems to give things the appearance
of a view through a magnifying glass. In the distant scene, islands are
set off by glistening clouds hanging from mountain tops. White towers of
thundery clouds push upward here and there over the sea, in startling
contrast to the blue of the sky and water. Nature seems to be at peace
but the trained weather observer may see and measure things that are
disturbing to the weather forecasters when put together on a weather map
of regions extending far beyond any single observer's horizon.
Here and there in this atmosphere that seems so peaceful an eddy forms
and drifts westward in the grand sweep of the upper air across these
southern latitudes. These temporary swirls in the atmosphere, some of
which are called "easterly waves," are marked by a wave-like form,
drifting from the east. The wind turns a little, the barometer falls
slightly, the clouds increase temporarily, but nothing serious happens
and the eddy passes as better weather resumes. This goes on day after
day and week after week, but during the hurricane season the storm
hunters are always on the alert.
All this work of charting the weather day by day and week by week is not
wasted if no hurricane develops. Planes take off every day from southern
and eastern airports, carrying passengers to Bermuda, Nassau, Trinidad,
Cuba, Jamaica, Mexico, and Central and South America. The crews stop at
the weather office to pick up reports of wind and weather for their
routes and at destination. The weather over these vast expanses of water
surface is reported and predicted also for ships at sea. And when a
storm begins to develop, ships and planes are among the first to be
notified.
Sooner or later, one of these swirling waves shows a definite center of
low pressure, with winds blowing counterclockwise around it. Now the
modern drama of the hurricane begins. In the region where these ominous
winds are charted, radio messages from headquarters ask for reports from
ships--every hour, if possible--and weather offices on islands are asked
to make special balloon soundings of the upper air and send reports at
frequent intervals. Warnings go out to vessels in the path of the storm
as it picks up force. Alert storm hunters in Cuba and other countries
are contacted to discuss the prospects, to furnish more frequent
reports, and to assist in warning the populations on the islands.
On the coast of the United States, excitement is in the air.
Conversations in the street, offices, stores, homes, everywhere, turn to
the incipient hurricane, and become more insistent as the big winds draw
nearer. And finally the hour comes when precautions are necessary. By
this time, business in the threatened area is at a standstill. The
situation is like that during world-series baseball games and almost as
dramatic as that which follows a declaration of war. Few people have
their minds on business. At this point, the reports of storm hunters and
the decisions of forecasters involve the immediate plans of hundreds of
thousands of people, large costs for protection of property, and the
safety of human life along shore and in small craft on the water.
Some of the men and women who came down to the weather and radio offices
this morning know now that they will not go home tonight. There will be
an increasing volume of weather reports, the rattle of teletypewriters
will become more insistent, the radio receivers will be guarded by alert
men growing weary toward morning, planes will be evacuated from airports
in the threatened region and flown back into the interior, and the
businessman will go home early and get out the frames he uses to board
up the windows when a hurricane is predicted. The Navy may take
battleships and cruisers out of a threatened harbor, so that their
officers will have room to maneuver.
Under these dramatic conditions the hurricane comes toward land with
good weather in advance--sunny by day and clear at night. The native
fears the telltale booming of the surf and feels concerned about the
fitful northeast breezes. In time there are lofty, thin clouds,
spreading across the sky in wisps or "mares' tails" of cirrus--composed
of ice crystals in the high cold atmosphere far above the heated surface
of the subtropics. A thin veil forms over the sky. At the end of the
day, red rays of the lowering sun cast a weird crimson color into the
cloud veil, reflecting a scarlet hue over the landscape and the sea. For
a few minutes the earth seems to be on fire. To the visitor, it is a
beautiful sunset. To the native, it is alarming, and in some parts of
the Caribbean it is terrifying as an omen of the displeasure of the
storm gods. In these dramatic situations the head forecaster makes his
decision.
Also, during these nervous hours, representatives of the Red Cross begin
arriving on the scene. At the same time, crews assigned to duties of
repairing telephone, telegraph, and power lines are sent to the
threatened area by their respective companies. As soon as the storm has
passed, these men will be ready to go to work.
At this juncture it is probable that strange things will happen. Against
the stream of refugees moving away from the coast, there are always a
few adventurers who come from more distant places to see the full fury
of a great hurricane roaring inland from the sea. At first they thrill
to the crash of tremendous waves breaking on the coast and hurling spray
high into the screaming winds. But when the rain comes in torrents,
striking with the force of pebbles, and beach structures begin to
collapse and give up their components to wind and sea, the curious
spectator has had enough. Hurriedly he seeks refuge and begins to wonder
fearfully if it will get worse. It does. He soon realizes that what he
has seen is only the beginning.
As the full force of the blast strikes a coastal city, the scene goes
beyond the power of words to describe. Darkness envelops everything,
with thick, low-flying clouds and heavy rain acting like a dense fog to
cut down on visibility. The air fills with debris, and with the roar of
the winds and the crash of falling buildings. Power lines go down, and
until the current can be cut off, electric flashes throw a weird,
diffuse light on the growing chaos. In the lulls, the shrieks of fire
apparatus and ambulances are heard until the streets become impassable.
Most of these great storms move forward rather slowly--often only ten to
twelve miles an hour. A boy on a bicycle could keep ahead of the
whirling gales if the road took him in the right direction. Automobiles
carrying news reporters and curious people travel the highways far
enough in advance to avoid falling debris, listening to the radio
broadcasts from the weather office to learn of the progress of the
storm. Of all places, the most dangerous are on the immediate coast and
on islands near the coast, where the combination of wind and wave is
almost irresistible. But even here an occasional citizen chooses to
remain, in spite of the warnings, and when he finally decides to leave
it may be too late to get out and no one can reach him. There have been
many instances of men being carried to sea, clinging to floating
objects, and after describing a wide arc under the driving force of the
rotary winds, being thrown ashore miles away from home. But in other
cases, people are trapped and drowned in the rising waters. In 1919, at
Corpus Christi, warnings were issued while many residents were at their
noon meal, on a Sunday. Many delayed to finish eating while the only
road to higher ground was being rapidly flooded. Of these 175 were
drowned.
The native knows all of the preliminary signs well enough, and it is not
necessary to urge him to take precautions after the moment when the
ominous gusts of the first winds of the storm are felt. He has been in
these situations before and has looked out to see palm trees bent far
over and the rain beginning to blot out the view as the fingers of the
gale seemed to begin searching his walls and roof for a weak spot. Many
prefer not to stay and watch. They board up their windows and doors and
go back to a safer place in the interior. And so this is the time when
the sound of the hammer is heard and streams of refugees are seen on the
highways.
In the early thirties, the increasing population in the hurricane states
caused an annoying shortage of communications in storm emergencies. For
many years the Washington forecasters had sent warnings by telegraph and
the men in weather offices along Southern coasts had talked to each
other by telephone, to exchange notes and opinions, but there were
frequent delays and failures after 1930 because, when a hurricane
approached the coast, the lines became congested with telephone calls
and telegraph messages between relatives and friends worrying about the
dangers, and by residents making arrangements for evacuation, in
addition to emergency calls of many other kinds.
In 1935, the Weather Bureau found a very good answer to the
communication shortage in emergencies. A teletypewriter line called the
"hurricane circuit," running around the Gulf Coast and Atlantic Coast of
Florida, was leased on July 1, with machines in all weather offices.
Another line was installed between Miami and Washington and eventually
extended to New York and Boston. No matter how congested the public
lines became, the weather offices were able to exchange messages and
reports without any delay. At the same time, three hurricane forecast
offices were established in the region--at Jacksonville, New Orleans,
and San Juan. After that time, the Washington office issued forecasts
and warnings of hurricanes only when they came northward to about 35°
north latitude and from there to Block Island, where the Boston office
took over.
The first violent tropical storm to strike the coast of the United
States after the hurricane circuit was set up came across the Florida
Keys on Labor Day, 1935. It was spotted in ship reports and by
observations from Turks Island on August 31 as a small storm. It moved
westward not far from the north coast of Cuba on September 1 and turned
to the northwest on September 2, having developed tremendous violence.
This hurricane is worth noting, for its central pressure, 26.35 inches,
was the lowest ever recorded in a tropical storm at sea level on land
anywhere in the world. The average pressure at sea level is about 29.90
inches. The biggest tropical storms have central pressures below 28.00
inches, but very rarely as low as 27.00 inches.
The strongest winds around the center of the Labor Day hurricane
probably exceeded two hundred miles an hour. About seven hundred
veterans of World War I were in relief camps at the point where the
center struck. A train was sent from Miami to the Keys to evacuate the
veterans ahead of the storm, but it was delayed and was wrecked and
thrown off the tracks as the veterans were being put aboard. The loss of
life among veterans and natives on the Keys in the immediate area was
nearly four hundred. There was much criticism in the press. In 1936, a
committee in Congress carried on a long investigation of the
circumstances which led to the establishment of the relief camps in such
a vulnerable position, the failure of the camp authorities to act on
warnings from the Weather Bureau, and the delay of the rescue train.
There was much talk in the committee of increasing the Weather Bureau's
appropriations, to enable it to give earlier warnings, but nothing came
of it.
The new teletypewriter circuit served well. After this violent hurricane
crossed the Keys, it went through the eastern Gulf and then passed over
Western Florida and overland to Norfolk. In spite of intense public
excitement, communications between weather offices were maintained
without serious interruption. This improved service continued in the
years that followed. Radio circuits to the West Indies and a
teletypewriter circuit to Cuba by cable helped to bring the reports
promptly and at frequent intervals in emergencies.
In this modern drama of fear and violence, the hurricane warning has
become the signal that may cause desperate actions by hundreds of
thousands of people. Colossal costs are entailed in the movement of
populations in exposed places and in the protection of property and
interruption of business. Now, in this emergency, a civil service
employee not used to making decisions involving large sums of money
finds himself in a position from which he has no escape. He has to make
up his mind--to issue the warning or not to issue it. If he fails to get
it out in time, there will be much loss of life and property that might
have been avoided. If he issues the warning and the hurricane turns away
from the coast or loses force, very large costs will have been entailed
without apparent justification. In either case, he will be subjected to
a lot of criticism.
The hurricane hunter and forecaster who stepped into this responsible
position at a critical time was Grady Norton. Born in Alabama, in 1895,
Grady joined the Weather Bureau shortly before World War I, then became
a meteorologist in the Army, after taking training at A. & M. College of
Texas, where a weather school was established early in 1918. But he had
no wish to be a forecaster or to send out warnings of hurricanes.
Nevertheless, the people in Washington were unable to get out of their
minds the fact that whenever Norton made forecasts for practice, his
rating was very high, especially for the southeastern part of the
country. The Bureau encouraged him at every opportunity because he was
one of those who are born with the knack of making good weather
predictions--which is an art rather than a science, even in its present
stage of development.
Then in 1928, Grady went on a motor trip and arrived in southern Florida
just after the Palm Beach hurricane had struck Lake Okeechobee, killing
more than two thousand people. He saw the devastation, the mass burials,
the suffering, and determined to do something about it. By 1930 he was
at New Orleans, getting experience in forecasting Gulf hurricanes. After
five years, the hurricane teletype and the centers at Jacksonville and
New Orleans were established and Grady was put in charge of hurricane
forecasting at Jacksonville. There, and later at Miami, his name, Grady
Norton, coming over the radio, became familiar and reassuring to almost
every householder in the region. For twenty hurricane seasons he took
the brunt of it in almost countless emergencies. In some instances, he
made broadcasts steadily and continuously every two hours, or oftener,
for two days or more without rest, his microphone having direct
connections to more than twenty Florida radio stations, and by powerful
short-wave hook-ups to small towns all over the state. As the hurricane
threatened areas beyond Florida, he continued the issue of bulletins,
warnings, and advices. In the last ten years of this service, he was
warned by his physicians to turn a good deal of the responsibility over
to his assistants, but the public wanted to know his personal decisions.
In 1954, after Hurricanes Carol and Edna had devastated sections of the
northeast with resultant serious criticism of the Bureau in regard to
the former, a fast-moving blow that allowed very limited time for
precautions, Norton died on the job while tracking Hurricane Hazel
through the Caribbean. A tall, thin, sandy-haired Southerner, Norton had
a slow, calm way of talking that put him, in the public mind, at the top
of the list of hurricane hunters of his generation. And it was generally
conceded that to his efforts were to be credited in a large degree the
advances in hurricane forecasting in the years after 1935. But the
outstanding progress was gained from the use of aircraft to reconnoiter
hurricanes, in which Norton played a very important part.
In Grady Norton's place, the Bureau put Gordon Dunn, who was an
associate of Norton's at Jacksonville when the service began and who had
more recently been in charge of the forecast center at Chicago.
By the end of 1942 it was plain that the weather offices of the Army and
Navy would have to join with the Weather Bureau in hunting and
predicting hurricanes. It was agreed that the combined office would work
best at Miami. For the 1943 storm season, the Weather Bureau moved its
forecast office from Jacksonville to Miami, with Norton in charge, and
the military agencies assigned liaison officers there for the purpose of
coordinating the weather reports received and the warnings issued. All
the experts felt that military aircraft would have to be used to get the
reports needed. In August, 1943, the news of Colonel Duckworth's
successful flight into the center of the Texas hurricane was the
decisive factor. Reconnaissance began in 1944.
_9._ WINGS AGAINST THE WHIRLING BLASTS
_Said the black-browed hurricane
Brooding down the Spanish main
"Shall I see my forces, zounds!
Measured in square inches, pounds?
With detectives at my back
When I double on my track!
All my secret paths made clear!
Published to a hemisphere!
Shall I? Blow me, if I do!"_
--Bret Harte
After Joe Duckworth flew into the center of the hurricane near Galveston
on July 27, 1943, there was much excitement about the remarkable fact
that he had experienced no very dangerous weather or damage to his plane
on the trip. But the experts realized that hunting hurricanes as a
regular business would be different. Men who had flown the weather in
the Caribbean and elsewhere in the tropics and subtropics, and those who
had just thought about it, had visions of undulating seas stirred by
soft tropical breezes, white clouds piled in neat balls on the horizon,
blue water, blue sky, and lush palm-covered coasts and islands. And yet
they knew that nowhere is the sly trickery of wind and storm more
dangerous. Suddenly and with no apparent reason, the soft breezes turn
into quick little gusts and wrap themselves around a center, with gray
clouds spreading and rain coming in brief squalls. The whirl spreads,
gathering other winds into its orbit, and hard rain begins. Soon there
are violent gales and the power of the storm is apparent in the roaring
of the wind and sea.
And so it is easy to think of a plane in a hurricane as being like an
oak leaf in a thunderstorm, except that the leaf is bigger in proportion
but lacks the skillful handling of a youthful crew, alert, fearful and
resourceful, straining desperately to keep it from rocketing steeply
into the wind-torn sea below. For these reasons, the men who ventured in
1943 to probe tropical storms by air were exceedingly cautious about it.
They went into it at a high level--usually as far up as the plane would
go--and came down by easy stages, in the calm center, if possible, ready
to turn around and dash for land the moment anything went wrong.
The next after Duckworth and his associates to look into a hurricane was
Captain G. H. MacDougall of the Army Air Forces. The second
fully-developed storm of 1943 came from far out in the open Atlantic and
passed east of the Windward Islands on a north-northwest course toward
Bermuda. MacDougall wanted to have a first-hand view of its insides.
Ships in the Atlantic were reporting extremely high winds and waves
fifty to sixty feet high and five hundred to six hundred feet in length.
MacDougall went to see Colonel Alan, who said he was ready to pilot the
plane. So the two took off from Antigua on August 20.
According to the report by MacDougall, they came in at a very high level
and began to explore the outer circulation of the storm. He said: "We
ran into rain falling from overcast. There were broken cumulus and
stratus clouds below us. As the sun became more and more blotted out, we
seemed to be heading into a bluish twilight. In spite of the low
visibility due both to rain and moderate haze, it was impossible to make
out the ocean through the wind-torn stratus below, and while we were yet
to see the teeth of the storm, the snarl was already too evident. A
surface wind of forty to fifty miles per hour from the southwest was
probably a good estimate in this part of the storm. Colonel Alan now
began to let the plane down and we stopped taking oxygen. At the same
time, the wheels were let down to minimize the turbulence, and the plane
leveled off at an elevation of one thousand feet which was below the
stratus.
"For those of us who had spent enough time in the Caribbean to be
familiar with the magnitude of the waves usually encountered, it was
hard to believe what we saw below. The seas were tremendous and the
crests were being blown off in long swirls by a wind that must easily
have exceeded seventy miles per hour. The long parallel streaks of foam
streaming from one wave to another made it evident from which direction
the wind was blowing."
About a month later, a tropical storm formed in the western Gulf of
Mexico, not far from Vera Cruz. Shortly afterward, it moved toward the
Texas coast, increasing rapidly in force, and there was general alarm.
People began to abandon the beaches and protect their property in the
coastal towns. At this time there was a young officer, Lieutenant Paul
Ekern, at Tinker Air Field near Oklahoma City, who was anxious to see
the inside of one of these big storms. This one looked like his last
chance for 1943 and he began talking it up. He found Sergeant Jack
Huennekens who was ready to go and they looked for a plane and pilot.
Time went by, but the hurricane center slowed down to a crawl and
described a loop off the coast, taking three days to turn around.
Excited conversations about the storm created interest, and about the
time that Ekern and Huennekens found an Air Force pilot, Captain
Griffin, anxious to go, a Navy man came over from Norman, Oklahoma, and
said he had some instruments he would like to carry into the hurricane
and get records of conditions encountered. He was told that anybody
crazy enough to go was welcome. He introduced himself as a Navy
Aerologist, Gerald Finger, and they all shook hands and got their things
ready.
On the afternoon of the eighteenth, with the hurricane still hanging
ominously off the coast but with some loss of violence, the crew took
off for south Texas, carrying the Navy man and his instruments. They
came into the storm area at about thirty thousand feet and proceeded
cautiously toward the center. At this level there was very little
turbulence, but the view was magnificent. There were mountainous
thunderclouds, some extending fifteen thousand feet above the plane.
Carefully they explored the region and finally came into a place where
they could see the surface of the Gulf white with foam and piled-up
clouds ringing a space where the sky was partly clear. This, they
decided, must be the center.