How early did early Americans know of coming hurricanes?

[Skara_Brae]

@Jim_s_Son

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 - Wikipedia

Ironically, a few days before it hit, there was an article in the NYT (I think) praising the national weather service for their superior predictions.

I remember my grandfather talking about that storm and saying it the days before it hit, local fisherman were catching huge hauls of fish, and a lot of them were not commonly found in local waters. I guess the theory was they were pushed north by the storm?

[ZonexandScout]

Another fascinating book on the subject is Erik Larson’s Isaac’s Storm, which describes the 1900 hurricane impact on Galveston. Highly recommended, though it is more about the results and less about the failure to predict the storm’s ferocity.

[kanicbird]

I’ve heard that they noticed certain patterns in animal behavior

Can animals predict the weather?

[Catamount]

@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.

Exactly. When you live somewhere for a while you learn what the normal barometric pressure feels like. Before a hurricane there is a distinct drop–even if you don’t have an actual barometer you can tell that the air feels “off” somehow. There are distinct cloud formations that appear before a hurricane as well. (I lived in eastern NC for ten years and I can still pick a hurricane cloud out of a lineup.) Granted, none of this tells you how strong the storm is going to be but they all indicate that *something *is coming.

[MikeF]

@Mr_Quatro

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 abou.t

Crooks and grannies? Felons and old ladies have reported on big storms? Facinating.