It has been a hurricane-free summer, although we have just entered the peak of the season. We could still get done up, several times, even. There's a Halloween Gale on this list, for instance.
With that in mind, we shall now take a look at the worst hurricanes to strike Massachusetts.
Two things to know.... one, we have a profound East Coast bias, in that there are several storms not on this list that did immense damage to Western Massachusetts. You read about a lot of destroyed apple harvests when you research articles like this.
Also, direct hits on Massachusetts are few and far between. Your typical hurricane that approaches New England curves offshore before getting to New England. When they do get close, our colder water weakens them. Florida and Louisiana laugh at this article, over both frequency and intensity.
Still, we have taken enough shots to get an article out of it... so, herrrrrre we go.
The Great Colonial Hurricane.... we
just covered this one a few days ago. However, it may have been our worst hurricane since the Other Man settled here in 1620. It was a Category 3 storm that rolled right through Eastern Massachusetts. If a similar storm hit today, damages would be almost incalcuable.
There were intense hurricanes in the 1100s, 1300s and 1400s, according to people who know how to tell stuff like that. Each of these may have been worse than anything we've had since people started speaking English here. We'll just let 1635 represent them.
1778... Two storms hit during 1778, and both had serious influence on the American Revolution. A hurricane in August did not make landfall here, but it did heavy damage to the English and French fleets as they prepared for the Battle of Newport.
A second storm hit on November 1st, and is notable for sinking the HMS
Somerset off of Provincetown. She was stripped of anything with military value (her cannons went to Paul Revere, who stationed them at Castle Island), and still lays there today at an area known as Dead Man's Hollow. She gets exposed now and then (three times since sinking, the most recent being 2010). The ship, which fired on Bunker Hill, is still British property.
1804 Snow Hurricane... The name is tricky, because Vermont and the Berkshires (30 inches) got the snow. Salem, MA got 7 inches of rain out of this, and 110 mph winds were recorded.
This is the storm that blew the steeple off of the Old North Church. ONC is known for her One If By Land history.
1815 New England Hurricane... aka The Great September Gale, as the word "hurricane" was not in widespread use at the time.
It came ashore in Connecticut, but did most of her damage in Rhode Island. It is one of five Category 3 storms to hit New England.
1841 October Gale... 1830 had 3 near-miss hurricanes that still did damage, but 1841 didn't miss.
The Georges Bank fishing fleet was destroyed, with 81 fishermen killed. 57 of them were from Truro, who erected a monument that still stands today. The storm also destroyed the Cape Cod salt works, which launched a localized recession.
The Saxby Gale... one of a pair of hurricanes to hit New England in 1869. The first one was the worst one, clocking in at Category 3 when it hit Rhode Island.
The second one, which hit in October, was a Category 2 as it made landfall on Cape Cod. It is known as the Saxby Gale because a British sailor named Stephen Saxby made two called shots on it. He predicted higher than average tides for early October 1869 all the way back in 1868, and called the storm itself almost a month before it hit... no mean feat for a guy who didn't have a satellite. Keep in mind, modern forecasters won't commit to anything beyond three days. His forecast had an air of the monkey who, if left at the typewriter long enough, will eventually type "Call me Ishmael," but he still has his own gale.
August 1924 hurricane... Massachusetts took a few shots between 1869 and 1924, but this storm did major damage. On Cape Cod, the Islands and Plymouth, it was worse than the upcoming 1938 storm.
As someone who reads about storms a lot, it is my opinion that this storm is one of those storms that would be more famous if it occurred during a period when we gave storms names.
1938 New England Hurricane... aka The Long Island Express. She came ashore in Connecticut, but the main damage was in Rhodey and the South Coast region of Massachusetts.
It was a Category 5, as high as the scale goes. It put a 186 mph gust onto Blue Hills. It was still a Category 2 hurricane as it hit Vermont, which has no ocean. It was at Category 1 strength when it hit Quebec... because when somebody says "hurricane," you immediately think "Quebec."
It is considered to be the worst storm to hit New England in the modern era, and could be the worst we've ever had.
The Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944... As if the Nazis weren't bad enough, this fellow came up for a how-do-you-do in September.
Damage was heavy on the South Coast, Cape Cod and the Islands. If 1938 didn't wreck it, this one did.
1954, Carol and Edna.... Massachusetts gets licked by two powerful hurricanes. Carol arrived on August 31st, as a major category 3 storm with 135 mph winds. She destroyed 1500 homes, killed a gang of people and knocked out power to a third of New England homes. There was a Hurricane Carol in 1953, but this Carol retired the name.
Edna arrived on September 11th, making landfall on Cape Cod as a strong Category 2 storm. Hurricanes tend to hit the Cape, Islands and South Coast worse than the South Shore, and these two sisters were no exception.
1960, 1961, Hurricanes Donna and Esther... Speaking of evil sisters, these two at least had the courtesy of putting a year between their arrivals. Donna hit Long Island as a Category 2 on September 12th, and put a 145 mph gust onto Blue Hills . Donna was prolific, killing 65 people on Senegal while still a tropical wave, then hitting the Turks and Caicos, the Bahamas, Florida, the Mid-Atlantic, New York and New England. She even tuned Maine up. That ol' Donna, she sure did get around.
Esther, in 1961, was no match for Donna, but she did do a neat trick of getting within 35 miles of Massachusetts, veering off to the East and then doubling back as a strong tropical storm.
Hurricane Belle... Belle formed in the Bahamas and came almost due north at New England. She hit on August 10, 1976.
She was a slow mover, and this weakened it and saved us from Carol-style damage. I was born in 1968, and this is the first tropical system that I can remember.
Hurricane Gloria... She arrived in late September, 1985 as a Category 1. She scored a 120 mph gust at the state police barracks in Rehoboth, where she also put a tornado down. Mom was making the evacuation decisions then, so I went to Quincy and missed this storm.
Prior to Gloria, the only damaging ocean storm between Esther and 1985 was the ferocious Blizzard of '78, which did most of her damage on the South Shore and points north.
Hurricane Bob... Bob hit on August 19th, 1991, and was/is the last direct hit from a hurricane suffered by Massachusetts.
Bob did catastrophic damage to Cape Cod, with Bourne getting a 125 mph gust and many areas losing 50 feet of beach. Bob did $1.4 billion in damage, a billion of which was to Massachusetts, mostly Cape Cod.
Bob is the worst storm to hit the Cape since JFK was elected. His only rival is our next storm.
The Halloween Gale... aka the No Name Storm or the Perfect Storm. She came about two months after Bob. Where Bob seemed to hate the Cape, this one disliked the South Shore.
She was Hurricane Grace at one time, before getting sucked into a nor'easter before spawning a new hurricane. They felt that naming the new hurricane (it would have been Henri) would have confused people... so they didn't name it, and people were even more confused.
This tore down anything coastal on the South Shore, and has not been matched since.
Tropical Storm Tammy... this 2005 storm, just after Katrina, was just a rainmaker.
She produced record flooding in northern Massachusetts.
Hurricane Irene... she made landfall in New York, but her eastern quadrant hit SE Massachusetts with wind and rain.
Power was out for 2-3 weeks for some Cape Codders. 2011 was the year, by the way.
Hurricane Sandy... this made for a bad 2012 in the mid-Atlantic, but didn't do much here.
Wareham had a microburst a few weeks later that did worse damage.
Hurricane Jose... a minor 2017 storm, it makes the list only because she stalled south of us and did a loopty loop. We had beach erosion for almost a week.
For my second date with Teresa, I took her to Sagamore Beach to watch this storm hit.
That''s all for now, but keep an eye on the suddenly-threatening tropics.
