"Long Island Express" redirects here. For the auxiliary Interstate Highway signed I-495, see Long Island Expressway.
1938 New England hurricane
Weather map from September 21 depicting the storm off the Mid-Atlantic coast
Meteorological history
Formed
September 9, 1938 (September 9, 1938)
Extratropical
September 22, 1938
Dissipated
September 23, 1938 (September 23, 1938)
Category 5 major hurricane
1-minute sustained (SSHWS/NWS)
Highest winds
160 mph (260 km/h)
Lowest pressure
<940 mbar (hPa); <27.76 inHg
Overall effects
Fatalities
682 to 800 direct
Damage
$306 million (1938 USD)
Areas affected
Southeastern United States, Northeastern United States (particularly Connecticut, New York, Rhode Island, and Massachusetts), southwestern Quebec
IBTrACS
Part of the 1938 Atlantic hurricane season
The 1938 New England Hurricane (also referred to as the Great New England Hurricane and the Long Island Express Hurricane)[1][2] was one of the deadliest and most destructive tropical cyclones to strike the United States. 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[3] on Long Island on Wednesday, September 21. It is estimated that the hurricane killed 682 people,[4] damaged or destroyed more than 57,000 homes, and caused property losses estimated at $306 million ($4.7 billion in 2024).[5][6] Multiple other sources, however, mention that the 1938 hurricane might have really been a more powerful Category 4, having winds similar to Hurricanes Hugo, Harvey, Frederic and Gracie when it ran through Long Island and New England.[7][8] Also, numerous others estimate the real damage between $347 million and almost $410 million.[9] Damaged trees and buildings were still seen in the affected areas as late as 1951.[10] It remains the most powerful and deadliest hurricane in recorded New England history, perhaps eclipsed in landfall intensity only by the Great Colonial Hurricane of 1635.[11]
At the time, roughly half of the 1938 New England hurricane's existence went unnoticed. The Atlantic hurricane reanalysis in 2012 concluded that the storm developed into a tropical depression on September 9 off the coast of West Africa, but the United States Weather Bureau was unaware that a tropical cyclone existed until September 16; by then, it was already a well-developed hurricane and had tracked westward toward the Sargasso Sea. It reached hurricane strength on September 15 and continued to strengthen to a peak intensity of 160 mph (260 km/h) near The Bahamas four days later, making it a Category 5-equivalent hurricane.[note 1] The storm was propelled northward, rapidly paralleling the East Coast before making landfalls on Long Island and Connecticut as a Category 3-equivalent hurricane on September 21. After moving inland, it transitioned into an extratropical cyclone and dissipated over Ontario on September 23.
^Voorhees, Josh (October 29, 2012). "Hurricane Sandy Isn't NYC's First Freak Superstorm". Slate Magazine. Retrieved August 23, 2019.
^"The Great Hurricane of 1938 - The Long Island Express". Archived from the original on September 25, 2014. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
^"The Great Hurricane of 1938 - The Long Island Express". Archived from the original on September 25, 2014. Retrieved February 9, 2017.
^Scotti, R. A. "Sudden Sea — The Great Hurricane of 1938". Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 2003. Retrieved November 30, 2007.
^"New England Numbers Hurricane of '38". NewEngland.com. Yankee Magazine. August 19, 2008. Retrieved April 8, 2024.
^Ian Webster. "$306,000,000 in 1938 is worth $6,734,734,468.09 today". CPI Inflation Calculator. Official Data Foundation. Retrieved April 8, 2024.
^An Actuary Reads the Newspaper(PDF). New York Annual Meeting October 18–21, 1998. Record of the Society of Actuaries. Vol. 24, no. 3. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
^Karen M. Clark (November 12, 2017). "A Hurricane Andrew Message for Insurers". Actuarial Review. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
^"Hurricane 1938 Aftermath". The PBS Network. Retrieved October 10, 2021.
^Lane, F. W. (1966). The Elements Rage. p. 16. ISBN 0-8019-5088-0.
^Lefebvre, Paul (October 19, 2016). "How a hurricane changed New England's forests" (PDF). The Chronicle. Barton, Vermont. pp. B1. review of book: 'Thirty-Eight, The Hurricane that Transformed New England', by Stephen Long 2016
^Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory. "Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale". Miami Regional Library. Miami, Florida: National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Retrieved June 15, 2016.
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