…and if so, how? I only ask because I saw this CNN article whose graphic seems to indicate it has happened. Furthermore perplexing is that Delaware seems to have been spared. How could both of these things be true? Or is this just another example of “fake news”?
The cited page says the Pennsylvania hurricane was in 1898. This (PDF) is the paper that page cites, but I can’t find much explanation of the Pennsylvania hurricane in it. It does say that the effects were inland, which makes sense. Edit: It was in 1878 according to the paper, so it was probably the Gale of 1878. The fact that it was so long ago means there were probably a lot of estimates made well after the fact.
I’m not sure “direct hit” means “straight off the ocean,” though, if that’s what you’re thinking. I think it means the actual hurricane struck the state, rather than just lower-strength remnants or outer bands.
Even if it’s actually incorrect, that’s not what fake news means.
Since Pennsylvania has no oceanfront, I don’t think it would be possible for a hurricane to make “direct landfall” there. The storm would have to go across, most likely, either Delaware or New Jersey to get to Pennsylvania, probably losing strength along the way. That’s what happened in 2012, when Hurricane Sandy made direct landfall on New Jersey and then proceeded across the state to enter Pennsylvania and continue across the southern part of that state. By the time Sandy got across NJ, however, it had weakened considerably, and I don’t believe that PA took much damage in comparison to what had happened in NY and NJ.
I looked at those cites as well. The numbers don’t wholly match, mostly because some states have one or two more on the CNN map than the NOAA table. I figure that CNN is adding in strikes from the last couple years, as the table only goes to 2015. Note, however, that the table gives Delaware 2 strikes, and the map none. Either that’s a mistake, or history has changed.
The way I interpreted the phrase “Direct hurricane hits” in the title of the graphic was, well, that a hurricane directly hit the state, not hit somewhere else first. Maybe i’m taking that too literally. But I was just wondering if something really bizarre might’ve happened, like a hurricane skittered up the Delaware river. That would be something.
If the path of the center of the storm passed over PA while still of hurricane intensity that would be a “direct hit on PA” in newspaper speak. How it got there from the mid-Atlantic to PA is not relevant. Only that it did so.
Sandy was no longer a Hurricane when it made landfall in NJ.
Yep. Unless the storm became a hurricane only after crossing the border, but that would be a strange storm indeed.
Or it exited land via Ohio while still a hurricane and then looped back and hit PA from Lake Erie.
Note that the CNN graphic in the OP only says “direct hit” … not “landfall” … the Gale of 1878 made landfall in North Carolina, tracked north through Virginia, Maryland and into Pennsylvania while still maintaining her tropical characteristics {Cite} … that seems very unusual but there’s no reason why the storm couldn’t maintain her structure that long over land as long as she was entraining moist air …
PA has been in the path of some big hurricanes, but it’s mostly the flooding caused by rainfall that caused problems. They do hit the Delaware and Jersey coast and move inland, it doesn’t take too long to hit PA after that. Hurricane Agnes in 72 caused massive flooding problems in PA after moving up the east coast, out into the Atlantic again, back over land in northern New Jersey, and then back out over the ocean again as a lower level storm. I don’t think the eye ever passed over PA but the flooding was incredibly destructive. For decades the high water mark in the Susquehanna in the Scranton region was apparent in many places from the debris deposited.
We got some serious flooding here after Hurricane Ivan about ten years ago or so. I’m up on a hill so I was okay (just an inch or so in our basement), but the people below us basically lost everything.
Interesting, I haven’t heard of the category of “post-tropical cyclone” before, but whatever that means, it was quite a powerful storm when it hit here. It did massive damage and also spawned a number of tornadoes, one of which sheared off treetops in the town I live in. There was a swath of wooded area that looked as if someone had taken a large lawn mower to it. It also caused major flooding at the shore areas and knocked out the power in much of the state for days, in some cases, weeks. Nasty storm; certainly the worst I’ve ever seen.
As always, there’s an xkcd for that (although that’s about damage caused, not where landfall occurred or how the storm was classified at various points).
This predates the current season, so no data on Harvey/Irma/etc.
I recall Hugo causing some minor damage, but that may have been just peripheral storms.
I was thinking Agnes as well since I was living in Reading when it hit, but Wiki says it was a tropical storm when it made landfall the second time near NYC. The XKCD drawing linked to in Gyrate’s post shows it was surpassed by Sandy. I remember standing on the banks of the Schuylkill River after it passed watching the employees of a sausage company on the opposite bank pitchfork thousands of pounds of contaminated meat into a trailer-sized dumpster.
Funnily enough, so was I. Small world.
Enormous storms which are not tropical cyclones off the east coast of a continent can be east coast lows.
Basically an ex cyclone then is a deep low, and if at the east coast can act like an east coast low… so go to east coast low for info on what it is and what powers it … the system lives a bit, its not just a storm front, its a long lived low system generating stormy conditions in it.
tropical cyclones can live for 10,20 days… and live without external requirements (east coast lows need troughs to live ?) and along the way grow from category 1 to 2 to 3 to 4… and grow in size and depth of low pressure… and grow influence on surrounding highs and lows.So hurricanes are a beast that grows on you and don’t easily die.
East coast lows just stomp around the shop a bit and self destruct, and I dont think they become hurricanes later on.
I think the 1878 storm being born as a cyclone over cuba is distracting from treating the remnant storm over the northern states as an east coast low. What happens is that the cylone moves towards the east coast low and its trough, and combines and lives as an east coast low fed by a trough. The resulting storm system, with high speed of movement, 45 mph, is an east coast low in behaviour… so it was definitely no longer a true cyclone north of north carolina
We really could do with an automated pop-up that tells anyone who uses the label “fake news,” that it DOES NOT APPLY to simple or inadvertent errors, or to changes in reporting styles from one century to the next.
Sheesh.
And remember, in the 19th Century, no one had ever seen a hurricane from overhead. All that was known about them was derived from observations at sea level.
And Delaware is MOSTLY South of Pennsylvania. A hurricane crossing North New Jersey into Pennsylvania could have had only relatively minor affect on Delaware.