In the days following the Great Hurricane, stories began to appear, or become more clear as it were, that offered in themselves a targeted glimpse of the larger picture of the storm in its time. Here are some interesting anecdotes from the Great Hurricane of 1938.

Springfield Native Gets It Right

After being closely followed for days, the crew at the Forecast Office in Jacksonville, Florida finally breathed a sigh of relief as they determined the storm's northward progression out of their sights. It was now early on the 21st of September, and the hurricane was presumed to be curving further out to sea. The role of tracking and predicting the storm's movement had passed to the office in Washington, DC. The person who was in charge of receiving the ship-to-shore observations (of which understandably there weren't many) was 28 year old Charlie Pierce, a 28-year old Junior Forecaster. Raised in Springfield, MA, he studied meteorology at Clark University in Worcester and at Boston University. He was a meteorologist at Trans World Airlines before joining the Weather Bureau in 1937.

The overnight shift actually downgraded the storm, and the advisories issued on the morning forecasts did not include a strong warning for the New England shoreline. Pierce, filling in for another, was slated to give the noon weather briefing to the rest of the staff at the DC Bureau. Pierce, of such low experience compared to the others, was perhaps more precocious too, able to put confidence behind his solid methods, even when delivering perhaps the most dire outlook with the smallest actionable time-frame anyone in the room would hear in their careers.

According to Pierce, this storm was not curving out to sea, but rather marching up the coast, parallel to New Jersey. The "Bermuda High", long since pegged to be a permitting force for curving Atlantic hurricanes, was unusually far north (though in reality this is determined by very few data points). He also determined that the low-pressure system off to the west, and the upper air currents associated with it, would work to keep the storm moving north, and accelerate it, straight into Long Island sound. He made his alarming presentation to the others, and the seasoned veterans scoffed. Perhaps their years allowed them to see the ramifications of a storm of that magnitude hitting land with no time left for any real warning, understanding it's statistically rare chance of occurrence, and simply went with those numbers, and the easier way out, together with their time-honored tradition of expected hurricane movements. The 2:00pm advisory was then headed for dissemination to the region with no mention of the word 'hurricane'. At 2:00pm, hurricane-force gusts were already being received on land, a mere half-hour away from Charlie Pierce's predicted direct impact.

In 1940, Pierce would later arrive in Boston to open up the first National Weather Service bureau there, at Logan Airport. During World War II he was stationed in Washington as the second-in-command of the weather analysis center. He then continued to forecast in Boston, at his preference, for he would quip, "all storm roads pass close to New England," until his retirement as supervising forecaster in 1973 (Long, 1994).

Voyage of the Carinthia

With perhaps the only serious warnings in effect with regard to the hurricane issued for the open waters, there weren't many ships at sea on the night of the 20th...except perhaps those few vessels that left days before there was cause for concern, and were perhaps days from any safety. The Cunard-White Star liner Carinthia was a 600 foot, 20,000-ton luxury cruise ship. It had a capacity of more than 1,600, but was only taking about 600 on a seasonal 2-week trip from New York to the Caribbean. Hearing the weather reports from the Jacksonville weather office of a dangerous hurricane headed toward Florida, the ship's Captain adjusted his course accordingly, so as to avoid the area the hurricane was perceived to be in, and to ensure the high-paying guests their posh ride had the expected destination.

Being far from shore, they were only to receive the weather reports via teletype wire transmission. They didn't receive anything overly alarming, and really couldn't do anything about it if they had. But by 10pm that same night, they found themselves near the center of the deepest storm system ever witnessed by a sea-worthy vessel in the Atlantic. Although of the aforementioned size, the ship was still batted about by the huge waves and the high winds pelted rain against the straining glass. The ship could do nothing other than take the storm head on, and hope for survival. The band played loud and fast, in a futile attempt to dim the obvious-- similarly to another White Star ship some years earlier, the Titanic. For more than 5 hours, the Carinthia was thrashed about, the ships crew barely able to keep enough rain and spray out to stay afloat. During their darkest hour, their barometer dropped to a staggering 27.85 inches (940mb), one of the pressures ever recorded by a surviving ship. The durability of this ship was not lost on the crew a few years later, when, after outfitted to her new status as an 'armed merchant cruiser', she was struck by the German Submarine U-46. Though torpedoed and badly damaged, she managed to stay afloat for 30 hours before sinking on June 7th, 1940, with only 4 dead.

Hitler Steals the Headlines

Perhaps one of the most stark reasons for the Great 1938 Hurricane being able to sneak up on everybody was the media pre-occupation with the growing problems in Europe. Adolf Hitler had finished his annexation of Austria, and had turned his sights on Czechoslovakia. One of its border provinces, Sudetenland, had many German-speaking citizens, and Hitler thought it a perfect entryway into seizure of the country to start with an air of chivalry to declare that he wished to intervene on the part of the citizens of the Sudetenland, for their benefit, inclining them as well to be added unto Germany, and making war with the Czech if this was not permitted to be. This was the running front-page story of the papers for much of September, 1938. To be sure, on the morning of the 21st, there also was a few paragraphs about a hurricane off the coast of the Carolinas, but its content was destined for unimportance, ran on the inside pages of the Providence Journal the same day the first floor of every building downtown was to be submerged in entirety by a storm moving so rapidly that the morning began with sunshine and ended with moonlight and devastation. Stamford, Connecticut, hit hard by the Great Hurricane, on the first news day after the storm, still led their paper with the headline: "Chamberlain in Reich to Try to Complete Hitler Deal", followed by the local headlines like "Scores of Families Driven From their Homes". The eve of landfall, on the 20th, CBS Radio in New York covered the growing problem in Europe from all angles, including a live report with correspondent Edward R. Murrow from London. Not a single weather advisory was included in the broadcast.

On the day after the hurricane, September 22nd, the top news headlines in the Northeast were shared by the hurricane and Hitler. The New York Times proclaims "Hurricane Sweeps Coast" next to "Czechoslovakia Decides to Give Up". On September 25th, the Providence Sunday Journal reads: "251 Dead; State Pushes Recovery" next to "Hitler Gives Czechs 7 Days to Bow". It wouldn't be long before singular headlines regained the stage with Chamberlain's infamous and disastrous proclamation: "Peace for Our Time".

The Great Depression-Buster of 1938

The immense disaster that was the Great Hurricane of 1938 came at a time when the northeast region and country-at-large was still hobbling out of the Great Depression that gripped the country unemployment rates as high as 25% in early 1933. Franklin D. Roosevelt created a massive labor effort called the "Works Progress Administration" in 1935, in an attempt to permit anyone who was willing to do anything, to get paid for doing something. Some work project would be established somewhere, be it the construction of a Post Office, a public golf course, even a play at a public theatre, and those who could wanted to could head over to the project and do some job on-site that required relatively minimal training in an era of a ably handy public (Taylor, 2008). These employees would be paid a standard daily rate, and they were free to leave for the private sector, or join up with another project when one was completed. In a lot of areas, this concept caught fire immediately, with many 'things that needed to get done' finally gotten around to. In other areas, there was much squabbling over local politics, missed deadlines, and even millions sunk into projects that never ended up being completed. Within a few years, the payroll of citizens involved in WPA projects swelled to more than 2.8 million. 1937 marks a boiling point in the life of the WPA. A mini-'Roosevelt Recession' hits. The Federal government funded projects frequently clash with the ideas of private enterprise. Persistent opposition worked to hasten the demise of the program itself.

Then along comes the hurricane. One with such a severe scope and coverage across a vital economic zone. The New England region needed to get up and running...and quick. In a normal, even present-day, scenario, finding the willing man-power to get this task done would be quite difficult. Henry Hopkins, the WPA chief, toured the area devastated by the hurricane, and decided that the best way to entice the necessary mass of labor was to recruit any able-bodied person, and pay them two to three times the standard rate (Burns, 2005).

The result was the immediate influx of more than 100,000 people from across the country to work on the restoration effort. These weren't easy tasks, mind you, and they still stand as a testament to the willingness of the Depression-era citizen, to seek work and to perform at a high level. It took a full week before 200 people, laboring constantly, were able to open up the streets of downtown Newport, RI to traffic. The private sector also sought their own hired guns. Thousands of people flocked to New England with the sole task of repairing phone lines. WPA employment figures swelled to 3,350,000 workers by November of 1938, many of whom had a job, specifically because of the hurricane.

It is still worth noting however, that economic loss from the storm is obvious. Not every road, house, or business was rebuilt after the storm. Many struggling mills along the rivers, often hobbled by occasional flooding, received the final death-knell from the hurricane's wrath. Even with all that, it can be easily said that the Great Hurricane brought with it a silver lining of economic opportunity.