Great September Gale of 1815
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| Category 4 hurricane (SSHS) | ||
|---|---|---|
| Formed | before September 22, 1815 | |
| Dissipated | September 24, 1815 | |
| Highest winds |
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| Lowest pressure | Unknown | |
| Fatalities | 38+ direct | |
| Damage | $12.5 million (2005 USD) $14 million (2008 USD) |
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| Areas affected |
New England | |
| Part of the 1815 Atlantic hurricane season |
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The Great September Gale of 1815 (the word "hurricane" was not yet current in American English at the time), is one of five "major hurricanes" (Category 3 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale) to strike New England in the years 1938, 1893, 1821, 1815, and 1635 (Hughes). At the time it struck, the Great September Gale was the first hurricane to strike New England in 180 years.
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[edit] Impact
The storm struck Long Island on September 23, 1815, probably coming ashore near Center Moriches (Ludlum); on the South Shore of Long Island it broke through the barrier beach and created the inlet that still isolates Long Beach, which had previously been an eastward extension of the Rockaways. Then in New England it came ashore at Saybrook, Connecticut. The storm delivered an 11-foot storm surge that funneled up Narragansett Bay where it destroyed some 500 houses and 35 ships and flooded Providence, Rhode Island, where a line marked on the Old Market Building marked the storm surge that was unexampled in the city until the New England Hurricane of 1938, which brought a 17.6 foot storm surge. At Matunuck, Rhode Island, sediment studies have identified the overwash fan of sediments in Succotash Marsh, where the 1815 hurricane storm surge overtopped the barrier beach.
In Dorchester, Massachusetts, just south of Boston, local historian William Dana Orcutt wrote in the late 19th century of the hurricane's impact: "In 1815 there was a great gale which destroyed the arch of the bridge over the Neponset River. This arch was erected over the bridge at the dividing line of the towns [Dorchester and Milton] in 1798." Dorchester's First Parish Meeting House was too badly damaged to repair [1].
The eye passed into New Hampshire near Jaffrey and Hillsborough [2].
[edit] Meteorology
In the aftermath of the Great Gale, the concept of a hurricane as a "moving vortex" was presented by Prof. John Farrar, Hollis professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Harvard. The storm "appears to have been a moving vortex and not the rushing forward of a great body of the atmosphere" he concluded.
[edit] See also
[edit] Further reading
- David M. Ludlum (1963). Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870, in series The History of American Weather. (Boston: American Meteorological Society)
- P. Hughes (1987). "Hurricanes haunt our history". Weatherwise, 40 (3), pp 134-140.
