Hurricanes in the 1700 and 1800's

1,446 Views | 6 Replies | Last: 5 yr ago by Rabid Cougar
Aust Ag
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AG
Is there much known about them in America back then?. Most of us are pretty well versed in the great Galveston hurricane of 1900, but what about before that? Also wondering how flooding was back then, with no dams and a whole lot less "structures" that may or may not inhibit the flooding.
BrazosBendHorn
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Indianola TX got hammered by intense hurricanes in 1875 and 1886. It was a ghost town after that.
Rabid Cougar
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AG
Some of the worst flooding in Texas History wasn't in even caused by hurricanes but by persistant lows that dumped huge quantities of rain I've several days.
Liquid Wrench
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NOAA tracks back to the 1850s: http://www.aoml.noaa.gov/hrd/hurdat/All_U.S._Hurricanes.html

Beyond that there are newspaper records.

Sapper Redux
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They were known and discussed as far back as the Spanish conquest of Central America. You can find quite a few letters cautioning about when to take to the sea and what could happen on land. Alexander Hamilton first rose to attention with a letter he wrote at 17 detailing a hurricane that hit St. Kitts:
https://founders.archives.gov/documents/Hamilton/01-01-02-0042

There weren't good records of deaths, and what we know of property damage depends on how good the records are in that area, but it was certainly tracked by the people of the time.
BQ78
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AG
An entire fleet of Spanish galleons was wiped out loaded with gold off the coast of Florida in 1715 and again in 1733.
BQ78
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AG
Also The Spanish drove the French out of Florida at Ft. Caroline (now Jacksonville) after marching through a hurricane to do it in 1565.
Rabid Cougar
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AG
You don't have to go back to prehistory to find out what it was like. You can trace every major civil works dam in Texas to a major catastrophic flood or floods that took place in the early 1900's. Most if not all of the flood control structures were authorized by Congress in the 1930's, but were built after WWII in the 50's and 60's.



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