Our stretch of nice weather continues. A warm first day of Fall is on tap for today. In fact the next several days should also be pleasant, with highs in the 70s and not many clouds. Now that Fall is here, Gothamist wonders if today will be the last day over 80 degrees until Spring.
The weather wasn't quite so nice 68 years ago. The Great Hurricane of 1938 struck Long Island and New England 68 years ago yesterday and today. The eye of the storm passed over the Hamptons, creating the Shinnecock Inlet, before heading up the Connecticut River Valley and eventually into the Adirondacks and Quebec. Most of Long Island was left without power. Downtown Providence was under twenty feet of water. Rutland, Vermont was submerged under ten feet of water. Nearly 600 people died.
Manhattan was spared the brunt of the storm, yet there was a power outage in Harlem and Washington Heights and up in to the Bronx. The IND and IRT subways stopped running. The bow of a Staten Island ferryboat became wedged under an iron bumper railing at her slip on the Battery. For twenty minutes the boat was lifted to a fourty-five degree angle with 200 passengers onboard.
The Great Hurricane of '38, as it is known, was the worst hurricane to ever hit the Northeastern United States. The storm moved northward with incredible speed, averaging 50mph. Without satellite and radar imagery to track it, the storm was a surprise to the region. Intellicast has a very nice history of the storm should you want to read more.
