One of the most interesting storms in the history of the young science of meteorology was a hurricane that blew through New York City on the evening of Sep. 3, 1821. The tide rose 13 feet, swamping the wharves and lower Manhattan. It came ashore across Long Island, and passed over western Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts, blowing down trees across the countryside as it went.
Eventually the storm became known as the Great Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane of 1821, and later just the Long Island Hurricane, although at first it was called The Great September Gale of 1821.
People really didn't know what to call hurricanes at the time. In fact, in the early decades of the 19th century, students of weather on both sides of the Atlantic argued about just what it was that had hit New York that day.
A young man named William C. Redfield set out from his home in Middletown, Conn., journeyed across New England shortly after the storm and noticed an interesting detail about the damaged forests. Near his home, the fallen trees were facing one direction, toward the northwest, and roughly 70 miles away in western Massachusetts, they faced the other way, toward the southeast.
Ten years later, writing in the American Journal of Science and Arts, he would carefully describe the direction of the winds, the timing of their arrival, the path of the storm, and for the first time developed a coherent vision of the structure of such a storm.
"To the writer, there appears but one satisfactory explanation of these phenomena," he wrote. "This storm was exhibited in the form of a great whirlwind."
Redfield, who had no training as a scientist and no higher education, in 1848 became the founding president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
IMAGE: NOAA/Hydrometeorological Prediction Center, David Roth
Tags: Hurricanes, Meteorology, Weather
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