named Clement Wragge had begun giving girls' names to tropical storms.
Down in that part of the Southern Hemisphere, hurricanes are called
willy-willies. They come from the tropics on a southwest course and turn
to the south and southeast on approaching or passing Australia. Their
winds spiral inward around the center in a clockwise direction--the
opposite of the turning motion of our hurricanes.
Wragge was the government meteorologist in Queensland, and later ran a
weather bureau of his own in Brisbane. A tall, thin, bewhiskered man who
stammered, he was known all over Australia as a lecturer on weather and
similar subjects. Australians of that time said that, as likely as not,
when due to talk about big winds, he would arrive at the lecture hall
with "too many sheets out" and fail to keep on his feet during the
lecture. Though his name was Clement, he was better known in Australia
as "Inclement."
Storms which did not come from the tropics were called by men's names.
Generally, Wragge called them after politicians who had earned his
disfavor, but for some reason he used girls' names for the
willy-willies. As an illustration for his weather journal called
"WRAGGE," he had a weather map for February 2, 1898, with a willy-willy
named "Eline." He predicted nasty weather from a disturbance named
"Hackenbush."
E. B. Buxton, a meteorologist for Pan American Airways, went to the
South Pacific in the late thirties and, after hearing about Wragge and
his names for willy-willies, adopted the idea for his charts. He
recalled particularly using the name "Chloe" for hurricanes.
With few exceptions, the hurricanes of the twentieth century went
unnamed in the United States until 1951, although some were referred to
in terms of place and date; for instance, the "New England Hurricane of
1938." Unofficially, a few had names of people. In 1949, while President
Truman was in Miami addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the first
hurricane of the season was called "Harry," and a little later a bigger
one which the newsmen said had greater authority struck southern Florida
and it was called "Hurricane Bess."
In sending out advices and warnings of West Indian storms, it was not
considered necessary to have names, as it was seldom that more than one
was in existence at the same time. In 1944, when aircraft reconnaissance
began, it became customary to get reports by radio-telephone and voice
was used increasingly in other ways by the hurricane hunters. But this
gave no particular trouble until September, 1950, when there were three
hurricanes in progress at the same time.
Two were in the Atlantic, one north of Bermuda and the other north of
Puerto Rico. The third appeared in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When
aircraft were dispatched into these storms and began reporting, there
was increasing confusion. Other communications and public advices became
mixed and there was much uncertainty as to which storm was meant. Use of
letters of the alphabet to identify them was no help, for letters B, C,
D, E, and G sound much alike by radio-telephone; also A, J, and H.
Numbers were no better because weather reports are sent by numbers and
the advisories issued on each storm are numbered, so that the number 3
could be the number of the storm, the number of the advice, an element
of the weather, the hour, etc.
The agencies involved in weather and communications in connection with
hurricanes met early in 1951 and decided to identify storms by the
phonetic alphabet, which gave Able for A, Baker for B, Charlie for C,
etc., in accordance with the following table:
Able
Baker
Charlie
Dog
Easy
Fox
George
How
Item
Jig
King
Love
Mike
Nan
Oboe
Peter
Queen
Roger
Sugar
Tare
Uncle
Victor
William
Xray
Yoke
Zebra
In the 1951 season, this worked very well in the communications and the
public began to speak of hurricanes by these names. At the start of the
1952 season, the agencies began to use the same list of names, starting
with Able for the first storm, but soon ran into difficulty. A new
international alphabet had been introduced as follows:
Alfa
Bravo
Coca
Delta
Echo
Foxtrot
Golf
Hotel
India
Joliet
Kilo
Lima
Metro
Nectar
Oscar
Papa
Quebec
Romeo
Sierra
Tango
Union
Victor
Whiskey
Extra
Yankee
Zulu
Some of the agencies had begun using the new alphabet in their
communications, while others stuck to the old one. So the third storm of
the season was "Charlie" part of the time and the rest of the time some
wanted to call it "Coca." At the end of the season there was no
agreement as to which phonetic alphabet should be used and there was
criticism for having continued an alphabet which was obsolete
internationally.
After a long discussion, military members of the conference suggested
adoption of girls' names, which had been used successfully for typhoons
in the Pacific for several years. Just how this practice originated is
not known, but it was thought by some persons to have come from the book
_Storm_, by George R. Stewart, which was published in 1941. In this book
a fictitious Pacific storm is traced to the United States and its
effects on the people are narrated in the style of a novel. A young
weatherman at San Francisco, according to the story, called the storm
Maria. Also there was Wragge's use of girls' names for willy-willies in
Australia and Pan American Airway's practice in connection with
hurricanes as early as 1938. At any rate, with these Pacific precedents,
the weathermen and hurricane hunters adopted the following list for 1953
for hurricanes in the Atlantic, Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico:
Alice
Barbara
Carol
Dolly
Edna
Florence
Gilda
Hazel
Irene
Jill
Katherine
Lucy
Mabel
Norma
Orpha
Patsy
Queen
Rachel
Susie
Tina
Una
Vicky
Wallis
This list worked perfectly in 1953; the public was pleased; the
communicators were happy about it; the newspapers thought it was
colorful; and use of the same names began to spread in Canada and some
of the countries to the southward. The same list was adopted with
enthusiasm for the 1954 season.
In 1954, Alice and Barbara were minor hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico,
although Alice broke up in tremendous rains in the upper watershed of
the Rio Grande, after moving inland over Mexico. There were floods which
broke records for all time as the water moved down the river. The third
storm, Carol, started a controversy in the press and many letters were
written to the editors and to the Weather Bureau, some favoring the
scheme or trying to get a little fun out of it, but most of them finding
objections of one kind or another. It was almost impossible to change in
the middle of the season, even if the hurricane hunters had wanted to,
so it was continued during 1954 and each new hurricane aroused further
comment. Later Hazel came along about the middle of October, a very
severe hurricane from the Caribbean Sea. It turned northward between
Cuba and Haiti and caused terrible damage and much loss of life. Later
it struck the coast of the Carolinas and crossed the eastern states
northward to New York. Loss of life in the eastern states was variously
estimated from fifty to eighty, and the damage to property, especially
from falling trees, was enormous. There was another flood of complaints,
this time about the name Hazel.
Before the argument was ended it threatened to be almost as stormy as
some of the smaller hurricanes so named. Early in 1955 the Weather
Bureau had a meeting with the Air Force, Navy and others interested in
deciding the question. By that time the opinions received by mail were
overwhelmingly in favor of continuing girls' names. In the meantime,
there had been a surprise. A storm having some of the characteristics of
a hurricane was sighted in the Caribbean Sea in January and, in the
absence of a decision on names to be used in 1955, it was called Alice
from the 1954 list. Later, the names for others in 1955 were decided as
follows:
Brenda
Connie
Diane
Edith
Flora
Gladys
Hilda
Ione
Janet
Katie
Linda
Martha
Nellie
Orva
Peggy
Queena
Rosa
Stella
Trudy
Ursa
Verna
Wilma
Xenia
Yvonne
Zelda
_17._ THE GEARS AND GUTS OF THE GIANT
"_he that wrestles with us strengthens our nerves and sharpens our
skill_"
--Burke
All through this book we have talked about hurricane hunters. By now it
is clear that the crew on the plane that goes into the storm at the risk
of destruction of the craft and death to the men is not really "hunting"
a hurricane. It is the exception rather than the rule when they discover
a tropical storm. The first hint comes from some distant island or a
ship in the gusty wind circle where the sea and the sky reveal ominous
signs of trouble. Somewhere in a busy weather office a large outline map
is being covered with figures and symbols. Long, curving lines across a
panorama of weather take shape as the radios vibrate and the
teletypewriters rattle with the international language of
weathermen--the most co-operative people in the world's family of
nations.
Hurricane hunting is done on these maps. Day after day, without any
fanfare, the weathermen search the reports spread across this almost
boundless region where hundreds of tropical storms could be in progress
if nature chose to operate in such an eerie fashion. Even the
experienced observers on islands and the alert officers on shipboard
might not see the real implications in the weather messages they
prepare. In the enormous reaches of the belt of trade winds, where the
tremendous energy of the sun's heat and the irresistible force of earth
rotation dictate that the winds shall blow as steady breezes from the
northeast, somebody might put in his report, for example, that there was
a light wind coming from the southwest. That fact alone would be enough.
In season, the weathermen would know, almost with certainty, that there
was a tropical storm in the area.
There are many things to watch for, in the array of elements at the
surface, in the upper air, the clouds, sea swells, change of the
barometer, faint earth tremors. A hint from this scattering of messages
in the vast hurricane region starts the action. And the planes go out to
investigate.
This is an extraordinary procedure. Looking at it as an outgrowth of the
insistent demands of citizens along the coasts in the hurricane region
for warnings of these storms, as the population increased and property
losses mounted, it seems that the flight of planes into these monstrous
winds is justified only until a safer method can be found. All other
aircraft are flown out of the threatened areas, obviously because the
winds are destructive to planes on the ground. The lives of men and the
safety of the plane in the air should not run a risk of being sacrificed
if it can be avoided. Of course, it is argued by some men that there is
a possibility that a method may be discovered to control hurricanes by
the use of chemicals or some other plan requiring planes to fly into the
centers. And it is true, also, that for the time being at least there is
certain information that can be obtained in no other way.
At the end of World War II, there was a grave requirement for more
information about hurricanes. Little was known except in theory about
their causes, maintenance, or the forces which determine their rate and
direction of travel. Since that time, literally thousands of flights
have been made into hurricanes and typhoons. Scientists have studied the
detailed records of these many penetrations.
We have learned a great deal in these years but by no means enough.
Herbert Riehl, a professor of meteorology at Chicago University, has
examined as large quantities of the data as any man. Recently he said,
"Our knowledge regarding the wind distribution within tropical storms
and the dynamical laws that guide the air from the outskirts to the
center of the cyclone is so deficient as to be deplorable."
From the scientific point of view, remarks of this kind are fully
justified, but progress in the issuance of warnings is quite another
matter. Hurricane prediction for the present and the near future is an
art and not a science. Very great progress has been made in recent years
in sending out timely warnings. There are figures to show the facts. At
the beginning of this century, a hurricane causing ten million dollars
in property damage was likely to take several hundred lives. Twenty-five
years later, the average was about 160 lives. Ten years later (1936 to
1940 average) the figure had been reduced to about twenty-five and was
steadily going down. After men began flying into hurricanes, the figure
was reduced to four (1946 to 1950). This is astonishing, not only in
showing how the warnings were improving after hunting by air got
started, but also the big gains shortly before that time, especially
after the hurricane teletypewriter circuit was installed around the
coast in 1935. Experience in prediction, on-the-spot operation, and fast
communications are vital.
In fact, the record was so good at the beginning of World War II that
most forecasters despaired of their ability to keep it up. It had
consistently been below ten lives for ten million dollars' damage and
one serious mistake could have raised this rate considerably for several
years. For this reason, as well as many others, the forecasters were
extremely grateful for the information from aircraft.
The main hope for greater savings in the future is that the solution of
some of the mysteries of the hurricane will enable the forecasters to
send out accurate warnings much farther in advance. In such an event, it
will be possible to protect certain kinds of property and crops which
are being destroyed at present. Heavy equipment can be moved and certain
crops can be harvested in season, if plenty of time is available. These
precautions are time-consuming and costly, and the advance warnings must
be accurate in detail. And it will help to make sure that no hurricane
different from its predecessors will come suddenly and catch us off
guard and cause excessive loss of life. Now and then we have one which
is called a "freak."
One thing we have become increasingly sure of and it will stand
repetition. No two hurricanes or typhoons are alike. Scientists may find
some weather element that seems to be necessary to keep the monster
going, and then are frustrated to find that not all tropical storms have
it. If some can do without it, maybe it is not necessary, after all. And
yet all of them fit a certain direful pattern; there is nothing else
that resembles these big storms of the tropics. Like the explosion of an
atom bomb, with its enormous cloud recognized by everyone who sees a
picture of it, the hurricane has well-known features--unlike anything
else--but of such enormous extent that no one can get a bird's-eye view
of the whole. Putting together what we know by radar, upper air
soundings, aircraft penetrations and millions of weather observations in
the low levels, we can draw a sketchy word picture. Looking down from
space, we could see it as a giant octopus with a clear eye in the center
of its body, arms spiraling around and into this body of violent winds
around the eye--all of the monster outlined by the clouds which thrive
as it feeds on heat and moisture. We feel sure of that much.
The birth of the THING has not been explained. There are plenty of times
when all the ingredients are there. Nothing happens. Observation and
theory flourish and swell into confusion. No scientist can say,
"Everything is just right; tomorrow there will be a hurricane."
Why it moves as it does is another grim puzzle. Ordinarily, the great
storm marches along with the air stream in which it is embedded,
changing its path with the contours of the vast pressure areas which
outline the circulation of the atmosphere, but too often it suddenly
changes its mind, or whatever controls it, or shifts gears, and comes to
a halt, or describes a loop or a hairpin turn. Nobody can see these
queer movements ahead of time. Going out there in an airplane to look
the situation over does not help in this respect. It is a vital aid in
keeping track of the THING and protecting life and property, but it ends
there.
Where does all the air go? When the big storm begins out there over the
ocean, air starts spiraling inward and the pressure falls, showing that
the total amount of air above the sea to the top of the atmosphere is
lessening, even as it pours inward at the bottom. For a hundred years
scientists argued that it must flow outward at the top, that at some
upper level the inflow of air ceases and above that there must be a
powerful reversal of the circulation. Here again we have frustration.
Going up with one of the investigators, we get the facts. Strangely
enough, this is one of the men who want to get into hurricanes, who come
down to the coast to look, and who finally "thumb a ride" with the
airmen into the big winds. A brief of his story will illustrate.
This story begins with the big Gulf hurricane of 1919. It came from the
Atlantic east of the Windward Islands, moved slowly to the northward of
Puerto Rico and Haiti and thence to the central Bahamas, a fairly large
storm threatening the Atlantic seaboard. Then it took an unusual path,
generally westward, with increasing fury. It was a powerful storm as its
central winds ravaged the Florida Keys and took a westward course across
the Gulf. It happened shortly after World War I and there was little
shipping in the Gulf. The slow-moving hurricane, now a full-fledged
tropical giant, dawdled in the Gulf and was lost; that is, lost as much
as a monster of its dimensions can be, but its winds were felt all
around the Gulf Coast and its waves pounded the beaches as it spent four
days out there without disclosing the location or motion of its calm
center.
Warnings flew all around the coast and the week dragged to an end with
the people extremely tired of worrying about it and the weathermen worn
out with continuous duty. Saturday night came and the center seemed to
be no nearer one part of the coast than another. Late at night, an
annoying thing happened. It was customary in those days for the
forecaster, in sending a series of messages from Washington, to stop
them at midnight and begin again early the next morning. It was the rule
that no reports came in between midnight and dawn. The clerk sending the
last message added "Good Night," to let the coastal offices know that
there would be no more until morning.
In this case, the forecaster ended his advisory with a notice putting
all Gulf offices on the alert and the clerk added "Good Night." And so
the offices received a message ending with these words: "All observers
will remain on the alert during the night. In case the barometer begins
to fall and the wind rises, Good Night." This created a furor in coastal
cities on the West Gulf and it was several weeks before the criticism
subsided. By Sunday morning, however, the gusty wind had not risen much
and there was no great fall in the barometer, so the weathermen had no
answer at daybreak. Soon afterward, however, the weather deteriorated
rapidly at Corpus Christi, and hurricane warnings went up as big Gulf
waves pounded over the outlying islands into Corpus Christi Bay and the
wind began screaming in the palms.
Around noon the worst of it struck the city. The tide mounted higher
than in any previous storm of record, except in the terrible Galveston
hurricane of 1900. Much of Corpus Christi was on a high bluff above the
main business section, but the latter and the shore section to the north
were low. It was after church and time to sit down to Sunday dinner when
the final rise of the water began to overwhelm everything. The police,
sent out by the Weather Bureau, were knocking on people's doors and
telling them to get out and run for high ground. But these low sections
had survived a big, fast-moving hurricane three years before, without
nearly so high a tide, and most people thanked the police but determined
to stay and eat. This decision was fatal in the North Beach section. The
road was cut off and nearly two hundred were drowned.
Down on Chaparral Street lived a man named Clyde Simpson, with his wife
and seven-year-old son Robert. The boy's uncle and grandmother were
there also. They were about to sit down to a big platter of chicken, and
the boy had his eye on a pile of freshly fried doughnuts. They had been
out standing with other nervous people to look at the great waves
roaring across the beach, but after a little the storm waters had forced
them back and covered the streets. Now the water was rising fast.
Several houses had come up off their foundations. A large frame
residence on the opposite side of the street floated across, and, while
they held their breath, missed them by a few feet, struck the house next
door, and both collapsed. The elder Simpson said it was time to get out,
dinner or no dinner.
The family went through the back yard, the nearest route to higher
ground. The boy's mother put the dinner in a large paper sack and held
it above her head as she struggled through the water. The father carried
the seven-year-old on his back and brought up the rear, swimming a
little as the water continued to rise. The grandmother, an invalid
strapped in a wheel-chair, was pushed and floated ahead by the uncle.
The boy worried as his mother got tired and let the paper sack hang
lower and lower. Finally it hit the water and the chicken and doughnuts
sank or floated away. That scene was etched in Robert's memory, along
with the battering of the winds and the tremendous rise of the waters
over the stricken city. The family survived.
Looking out of the windows of the courthouse on the edge of the bluff
above the business section, the boy watched others struggling toward
higher ground. Afterward the family returned to their house, smeared
with oil and tar and by dirty water, floors covered with sand, mud, and
debris. Robert saw death on every hand--dead dogs, birds, cats, rodents,
and one neighbor who failed to get out.
In 1933, when one of the hurricanes of that year crossed the Gulf and
threatened the lower Texas Coast, much like the big one in 1919, a young
fellow drove all the way from Dallas to have a look at it. He was Robert
Simpson. He never got it out of his mind. Finally, he joined the Weather
Bureau, worked at hurricane forecasting offices and in 1945 "thumbed"
his first ride into a hurricane. After that his enthusiasm and
persistence annoyed some of the older weathermen and bothered members of
the air crews who flew the big storms both in the Atlantic and Pacific.
Simpson made up his mind that he would use every opportunity to find out
how the big storms were organized and what they were geared to in their
movements, regular and irregular--the gears and guts of the THING. When
Milt Sosin lurched into the center of the big storm in 1947 in a B-17
and looked up to see a B-29 high in the eye of the same hurricane,
Simpson was up there with the men from Bermuda, trying to find out what
steered the monster. And on this flight, with a B-29, they expected to
come out on top at twenty-eight to thirty thousand feet, according to
the theorists and the textbooks, but they broke out just below forty
thousand, still one hundred miles from the center. From there the high
cloud sheet should have sloped downward to the center, if they were to
believe the accepted doctrine of circulation in the top of the
hurricane. But they were shocked and chagrined to find that the high
cloud sheet--the cirrostratus--sloped sharply upward in front of them,
rising far above the extreme upper operational ceiling of the B-29.
And so the superfortress turned toward the center and rocketed into the
high cloud deck with misgivings on the part of Pilot Eastburn and
Simpson. The latter reported: