Rediscovering Hurricanes

MAJOR ATLANTIC HURRICANES FROM 1495 T0 THE PRESENT DAY

Hurricanes played an important role during the European exploration and colonization of the Americas. New settlements were established, battles were lost and geography was changed by these monster storms. During the sixteenth, seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, hurricanes posed some great and unique challenges for the colonists in the Caribbean, Central America and North America. These storms quickly became the most feared aspect of their physical environment, destroying staple and cash crops and provisions, leveling plantations, cities and towns, disrupting shipping and trade, and resulting in major economic losses for colonial residents and native inhabitants. During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, hurricanes making landfall in the Caribbean and on the coast of North America may have gone unreported because of the dispersed character of colonial settlements in the region. By the eighteenth century, settlements were more uniformly distributed throughout the Caribbean and increased use of the sea-lanes provided a higher likelihood of storms being detected and reported. With the coming of the Europeans, written records, first in meticulous Spanish and then English, began but generally only of storms that sank ships or devastated colonial settlements were recorded. The quantitative record of Atlantic hurricanes began in 1851, and actually started to be reliable just before the turn of the 20^th Century. The historical record of hurricane activity in this region before the late 1800’s is sadly deficient. There are a number of reasons why hurricanes moving through this region may not have been recorded in historical records because given the fact that the major islands in this region were not settled until early to mid 1600’s. First, prior to the early to mid 1600’s hurricanes that moved through the region were not recorded due to lack of permanent settlements. Second, a small percentage of North Atlantic hurricanes made landfall in the region only, so therefore they were not recorded. Third, unless these storms produced excessive damage and/or loss of life, they were unlikely to be recorded in historical manuals or documents. Fourth, during the early 1900s and earlier in the 1700’s and 1800’s Wars in Europe and America with impact on the Caribbean were nearly constant during the colonial period. News of these events often dominated newspaper reports and may have pre-empted reports of lesser scale weather events such as hurricanes in the region, especially with the minimal storms. Inaddition, colonial affiliations impacted the sharing of news. Poor relations between the British and the French resulted in trade restrictions between the two colonies, by extension; this would inhibit the delivery of news of weather catastrophes to colonies with different affiliations. Fifth, it was estimated that as much as fifty-four percent of the hurricanes and tropical storms in the North Atlantic Ocean failed to make landfall in the Caribbean so from a historical perspective, storms would only be documented if a ship encountered a hurricane while in transit, survived, and then reported the incident after making port. For example, in The Bahamas, between 1784 and 1837, ships’ Captains filed twenty-two reports of storm damages after making port in Nassau. Sixth, ship logs, newspaper records and weather dairies of plantation owners often reported these storms as ‘severe gales’ rather than hurricanes or tropical storms, so some of these storms might have gone unreported or under-reported. Finally, hurricanes that made their way through one island in the region after (or prior to) inflicting greater damage among those of other populated areas of the North Atlantic coast or the Caribbean, may have gone unreported in the face of the greater damage reports from these more populated areas. An accurate record of historical weather patterns is essential as scientists attempt to understand how contemporary weather patterns relate to the weather and climate of the past with a view of affecting the weather of the future. When choosing these storms, I took into consideration such obvious factors as the event's magnitude, historical significance, meteorological uniqueness (low barometric pressure, catastrophic storm surge and high winds), records they created or shattered, economic impact, and death toll when devising this list. Based on these factors these storms on the list have earned the title as the major North Atlantic storms.

The Hurricane of 1495--In 1495 Christopher Columbus encountered a hurricane near Hispaniola. The earliest hurricane report comes from Christopher Columbus, who encountered a tropical storm on one of his voyages to the New World. He later declared that “nothing but the service of God and the extension of the monarchy” would induce him to expose himself to such a danger from a storm again. Columbus and his crew were the first Europeans to experience a hurricane, and it is from his accounts that information about storms and the word itself entered European consciousness.