# How early did early Americans know of coming hurricanes?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 4, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519 "2017-09-04T23:02:56Z")
**Posts on this page:** 20
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Jackknifed\_Juggernaut](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jackknifed_Juggernaut)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2017, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/1 "2017-09-04T23:02:56Z")
Were/are there signs of an approaching storm that Americans utilized before the days of satellites and other modern tools? Or were they basically surprised every time?
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### Author:  [@beowulff](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/beowulff)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2017, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/2 "2017-09-04T23:07:04Z")
Red sky in morning, sailors take warning.
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### Author:  [@hogarth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/hogarth)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2017, 11:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/3 "2017-09-04T23:07:07Z")
Falling barometric pressure was measured using barometers.
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### Author:  [@DrFidelius](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrFidelius)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2017, 11:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/4 "2017-09-04T23:09:22Z")
How early?
It’s pretty hard to tell how the natives of the Caribbean islands dealt with hurricanes since do few of them survived Europeans.
Sent from my SAMSUNG-SM-G930A using Tapatalk
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### Author:  [@Colibri](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colibri)
#### Post date: [September 4, 2017, 11:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/5 "2017-09-04T23:42:40Z")
There would have been little warning in advance of the the fringes of the storm itself before the Twentieth Century. Many ships of the Spanish Empire, for example, sank when they were unexpectedly overtaken by hurricanes.
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### Author:  [@rbroome](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/rbroome)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/6 "2017-09-05T00:26:59Z")
I live on the Gulf coast.
The weather feels different when a storm is approaching-maybe 24 hours out. I don’t need a barometer to know something is coming. And yes, I am well aware of biases inherent in this. I have been around a lot of hurricanes and the weather is different.
Of course it doesn’t help much in predicting where or how strong the storm is. But I know something is coming. There may be false alarms as the storm makes landfall somewhere else, but the storm is going to hit somewhere.
I felt and saw Harvey 24 hours before the first landfall. Fortunately for my area, it was just a few days of intermittent showers. But it wasn’t a surprise.
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### Author:  [@Mangosteen](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangosteen)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 12:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/7 "2017-09-05T00:48:26Z")
I bet the Seminole Indians in Florida knew when they were coming having lived in the area for generations. They probably headed inland or knew of protective caves nearly when the cloud and wind signs showed up.
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### Author:  [@N9IWP](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/N9IWP)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 12:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/8 "2017-09-05T00:49:45Z")
I’m not sure when telegraph lines were installed in the relevant areas, but that could be used.
Brian
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### Author:  [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/9 "2017-09-05T01:29:32Z")
It’s a-comin’.
It’s a-gonna blow.
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### Author:  [@watchwolf49](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/watchwolf49)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 1:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/10 "2017-09-05T01:44:17Z")
From Wikipedia’s article [“1893 Sea Islands hurricane”](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1893_Sea_Islands_hurricane)
> [@](#):
>
> It is believed that the first effects of the storm were beginning to be felt in the Sea Islands area, with the winds steadily increasing during the night of the 25th. Some of the inhabitants anticipated the storm and left the islands as quickly as possible. The conditions soon rapidly deteriorated on the island and the hurricane passed over sometime on the 26th.
So, the winds start picking up about 24 hours ahead of the storm and we know to start moving to high ground … by the early 20th Century, we have the beginnings of radio networks and ship-to-shore communications which was a big advance in forecasting ability …
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### Author:  [@Francis\_Vaughan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Francis_Vaughan)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 1:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/11 "2017-09-05T01:52:13Z")
We had a thread on something similar a while ago. The point there was that you can do a lot about general awareness of weather without satellite imagery. The most important measure of weather is probably barometric pressure. Once you have the ability to communicate reasonably quickly - such as with a telegraph system, and you have what is needed to get a passable amount of information about the nature of the regional weather. If you can have some ships equipped with radio sending in weather readings as they travel about you can include some part of the ocean, and that gets you a lot more. The ability to create a synoptic chart with an understanding of how weather works will get you some awareness of the existence and location of weather systems. For a hurricane you won’t necessarily know how bad it is, and certainly won’t be able to make accurate predictions about its path, but you should have some idea. Even without communications a rapidly falling barometric pressure is going to be a very good clue that there something bad on the way. But with communications you can gain an idea of where and when.
Overall the advent of supercomputer prediction systems have had a much greater influence on weather forecasting than satellites.
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### Author:  [@Fubaya](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fubaya)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 3:33am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/12 "2017-09-05T03:33:40Z")
[Father Benito Vines](http://www.miamiarch.org/CatholicDiocese.php?op=Article_131017125417303) started the first hurricane warning service in the 1870s by observing the clouds. He could give a couple days warning and track the hurricane by the types of clouds and the direction they came from. This required the hurricane to be coming close to his location, of course. It wasn’t until ships started using radio in 1905 that reliable tracking was done before the hurricane was close.
There are some rules of thumb for predicting hurricanes by local observation, but I don’t know how much people knew 150+ years ago and how much was compiled more recently. Some people living along the coast surely knew \*some \*of them.
About four days before a hurricane, a 1 meter swell will roll in about every 10 seconds from the direction of the hurricane. This will increase in height and frequency until the hurricane passes. 48 hours before the hurricane hits winds will go calm because it disrupts the normal winds in the area. The pressure starts falling and cirrus clouds approach from the hurricane’s direction at 36 hours. The barometer falls faster, winds pick up and low clouds come in at 24 hours, etc. From there, things more or less get worse and worse. It should be pretty obvious something nasty is coming 24 hours out.
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### Author:  [@Oly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Oly)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 3:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/13 "2017-09-05T03:50:10Z")
> [@rbroome](#):
>
> I live on the Gulf coast.
> The weather feels different when a storm is approaching-maybe 24 hours out. I don’t need a barometer to know something is coming. And yes, I am well aware of biases inherent in this. I have been around a lot of hurricanes and the weather is different.
> Of course it doesn’t help much in predicting where or how strong the storm is. But I know something is coming. There may be false alarms as the storm makes landfall somewhere else, but the storm is going to hit somewhere.
>
> I felt and saw Harvey 24 hours before the first landfall. Fortunately for my area, it was just a few days of intermittent showers. But it wasn’t a surprise.
I imagine this kind of thing would play a big part. The natives peoples essentially lived outside all the time and for that and other reasons would be very adept at noticing small changes in the local environment.
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### Author:  [@filmore](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/filmore)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 3:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/14 "2017-09-05T03:55:38Z")
Did the Europeans have any knowledge about hurricanes before the New World was discovered?
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### Author:  [@MrDibble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MrDibble)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 7:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/15 "2017-09-05T07:16:10Z")
> [@filmore](#):
>
> Did the Europeans have any knowledge about hurricanes before the New World was discovered?
Hurricanes hit the Azores all the time, occasionally hit the Canaries, and on very rare occasions, may even impact [Europe](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Vince) [directly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Debbie_(1961)), so yes? No Medieval records, but the Early Modern [record](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tropical_cyclone_effects_in_Europe#Pre-1900) is a good pointer. Also, not hurricanes _sensu strictu_, but anyone trading with the East would likely have been aware of Indian Ocean cyclones, which strike anywhere from the Arabian Peninsula through to India.
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### Author:  [@Bijou\_Drains](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bijou_Drains)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/16 "2017-09-05T20:50:16Z")
one theory about the Lost Colony on the coast of NC in 1590 is that they were wiped out by a hurricane but that’s not a widely accepted theory.
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### Author:  [@JackieLikesVariety](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JackieLikesVariety)
#### Post date: [September 5, 2017, 10:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/17 "2017-09-05T22:34:45Z")
folks interested (and who wouldn’t be?) should read Al Roker’s book[Storm of the Century.](https://www.amazon.com/Storm-Century-Survival-Deadliest-Hurricane/dp/0062364669/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1504650687&sr=8-1&keywords=al+roker)
it’s specifically about the hurricane that hit Galveston but it’s also about the history of the weather service and forecasting more generally.
fascinating but an easy/fast read.
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### Author:  [@BuckChongo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BuckChongo)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2017, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/18 "2017-09-06T00:31:29Z")
Thousands of people in Galveston learned about the hurricane when they woke up in the middle of the night in the wreckage of their homes drowning in the storm surge.
Me and another old coot were talking about the weather the other day, missing the old days when all the warning you had was whatever was coming up over the horizon. Wasn’t all that long ago, either.
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### Author:  [@Jim\_s\_Son](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jim_s_Son)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2017, 1:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/19 "2017-09-06T01:50:21Z")
The 1938 New England hurricane was not very well forecast and lots of damage on Long Island, NY due to inadequate warning.
> **[1938 New England hurricane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/1938_New_England_hurricane)**
>
> The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane) was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike Long Island, New York, and New England. The storm formed near the coast of Africa on September 9, becoming a Category 5 hurricane on the Saffir–Simpson hurricane scale, before making landfall as a Category 3 hurricane on Long Island on Wednesday, September 21. It is estimated that the hurricane At the...
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### Author:  [@Mr\_Quatro](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr_Quatro)
#### Post date: [September 6, 2017, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/how-early-did-early-americans-know-of-coming-hurricanes/795519/20 "2017-09-06T02:57:54Z")
I don’t know how old the coast lines of Texas and Louisiana and of course North Carolina to long Island have been around, but you can tell by the crooks and grannies that they have seen a lot of hurricanes in their developmental ages.
The real question is how did anyone survive in those regions to warn the next generation to leave that area when the stormy weather is coming. However I did see a hurricane come as far as Waco, Texas when I was a small boy, of which the old timers probably still talk about.
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