One of the most noted storms of the nineteenth century was “Saxby’s Gale,” which caused a great amount of destruction in New Brunswick on October 4, 1869. The amazing fact was that this storm was predicted nearly a year before by a Lieutenant Saxby of the British Navy. In November, 1868, he wrote to the newspapers in London, predicting that the earth would be visited by a storm of unusual violence attended by an extraordinary rise of tide at seven o’clock on the morning of October 5, 1869.

Saxby wrote the following explanation of his forecast to the newspaper:

“I now beg to state with regard to 1869 at 7 A.M. October 5th, the Moon will be at the part of her orbit which is nearest the Earth. Her attraction will be therefore at its maximum force. At noon of the same day the Moon will be on the Earth’s equator, a circumstance which never occurs without marked atmospheric disturbance, and at 2 P.M. of the same day lines drawn from the Earth’s centre would cut the Sun and Moon in the same arc of right ascension (the Moon’s attraction and the Sun’s attraction will therefore be acting in the same direction); in other words, the new moon will be on the Earth’s equator when in perigee, and nothing more threatening can, I say, occur without miracle. The earth it is true will not be in perihelion by some sixteen or seventeen seconds of semidiameter.

“With your permission I will during September next (1869) for the safety of mariners briefly remind your readers of this warning. In the meantime there will be time for the repair of unsafe sea walls and for the circulation of this notice throughout the world.”

It seems that Saxby had made other similar forecasts. Commenting on one of his predictions, a London newspaper, the Standard, said:

“Saxby claims to have been successful in some of his predictions, and he may prove either lucky or clever on the present occasion. As the astronomical effect will operate over the entire globe, it is exceedingly likely there will be a gale of wind and a flood somewhere.”

The extraordinary fact is that a citizen of Halifax, Nova Scotia, disturbed by Saxby’s prediction for October 5, 1869, wrote to the local newspaper the week before:

“I believe that a heavy gale will be encountered here on Tuesday next 5th October beginning perhaps on Monday night or possibly deferred as late as Tuesday night, but between these two periods it seems inevitable. At its greatest force the direction of the wind should be southwest, having commenced at or near south.

“Should Monday the 4th be a warm day for the season an additional guarantee of the coming storm will be given. Roughly speaking the warmer it may be on the 4th, the more violent will be the succeeding storm. Apart from the theory of the Moon’s attraction, as applied to Meteorology—which is disbelieved by many, the experience of any careful observer teaches him to look for a storm at next new moon, and the state of the atmosphere, and consequent weather lately appears to be leading directly not only to this blow next week, but to a succession of gales during next month.”

Actually the fourth began as a warm day in New Brunswick and later in the day the storm became violent, as predicted by the Halifax citizen, named Frederick Allison.

There were high tide and heavy rain at Halifax but the weather in general was a disappointment, for the citizens, after seeing the warning in the newspaper, had made many preparations about the wharves, moving goods to higher floors in warehouses, and anchoring boats out in the stream or securing them with lines in all directions.

Near by in New Brunswick, however, the storm on October 4 was severe. The gale rose to hurricane strength between 8:00 and 9:00 P.M. The tide at St. John was above any preceding mark. Vessels broke away from their moorings and some were badly damaged. Buildings were flooded and in St. John and other cities and towns in the area, buildings were demolished or unroofed, tracts of forest trees were uprooted, and cattle were drowned in great numbers.

All of this was rather remarkable as the storm reached its height at about 9:00 P.M. on October 4th, which was actually after midnight by London time and therefore on October 5th. Regardless of these circumstances, this is an instance of a storm that had a name—“Saxby’s Gale”—long before it occurred and for years afterward. Some weathermen thought that it was of tropical origin and had been a hurricane in lower latitudes, but if so, it came overland in its final days, for it was felt at Washington, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and in parts of New England on the third and early on the fourth, with heavy rains and gales in many localities.

A few hurricanes have been named for the peculiar paths they followed. One that was very unusual was the “Loop Hurricane” of October, 1910. It was an intense storm that passed over western Cuba, after which its center described a small loop over the waters between Cuba and Southern Florida. When it finally crossed the coast of western Florida, it caused tides so high that many people had to climb trees to keep from drowning. The “Yankee Hurricane” was so named by the Mayor of Miami. It was first observed to the east of Bermuda in late October, 1935, moving westward. On approaching the coast of the Carolinas, it took an extraordinary course, almost opposite to the normal track at that season, and went southwestward to southern Florida, with its calm center over Miami on the fourth of November. In the same year, another unusual storm known as the “Hairpin Hurricane” started in the western Caribbean, moved northeastward to Cuba, and then turned sharply southwestward to Honduras, describing a track shaped like a hairpin. It caused one of the worst disasters of that region. Loss of life exceeded two thousand.

Examples of storms named after ships are “Racer’s Storm” in 1837, named after a British sloop of war which was caught in its hurricane winds in the Yucatan Channel. Another one of great violence was called “Antje’s Hurricane,” because it dismasted a schooner of that name in the Atlantic in 1842.

In Puerto Rico, a hurricane may be given the name of the saint whose feast is celebrated on the day on which it strikes the island. The most famous are: Santa Ana, July 26, 1825; Los Angeles, August 2, 1837; Santa Elena, August 18, 1851; San Narcisco, October 29, 1867; San Felipe, September 13, 1876; San Ciriaco, August 8, 1899; and the second San Felipe, September 13, 1928.

Doubtless the worst hurricane during the twentieth century was the one in 1928, “San Felipe.” It caused damage estimated at fifty million dollars in Puerto Rico, and later struck Florida, causing losses estimated at twenty-five million dollars. Puerto Rico lost three hundred lives, Florida nearly two thousand.

One of the well-known storms of the West Indies was the “Padre Ruiz Hurricane,” which was named after a priest whose funeral services were being held in the church at Santa Barbara, Santo Domingo, on September 23, 1837, when the hurricane struck the island, causing an appalling loss of life and property destruction.

Before the end of the nineteenth century, a weatherman in Australia named Clement Wragge had begun giving girls’ names to tropical storms. Down in that part of the Southern Hemisphere, hurricanes are called willy-willies. They come from the tropics on a southwest course and turn to the south and southeast on approaching or passing Australia. Their winds spiral inward around the center in a clockwise direction—the opposite of the turning motion of our hurricanes.

Wragge was the government meteorologist in Queensland, and later ran a weather bureau of his own in Brisbane. A tall, thin, bewhiskered man who stammered, he was known all over Australia as a lecturer on weather and similar subjects. Australians of that time said that, as likely as not, when due to talk about big winds, he would arrive at the lecture hall with “too many sheets out” and fail to keep on his feet during the lecture. Though his name was Clement, he was better known in Australia as “Inclement.”

Storms which did not come from the tropics were called by men’s names. Generally, Wragge called them after politicians who had earned his disfavor, but for some reason he used girls’ names for the willy-willies. As an illustration for his weather journal called “WRAGGE,” he had a weather map for February 2, 1898, with a willy-willy named “Eline.” He predicted nasty weather from a disturbance named “Hackenbush.”

E. B. Buxton, a meteorologist for Pan American Airways, went to the South Pacific in the late thirties and, after hearing about Wragge and his names for willy-willies, adopted the idea for his charts. He recalled particularly using the name “Chloe” for hurricanes.

With few exceptions, the hurricanes of the twentieth century went unnamed in the United States until 1951, although some were referred to in terms of place and date; for instance, the “New England Hurricane of 1938.” Unofficially, a few had names of people. In 1949, while President Truman was in Miami addressing the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the first hurricane of the season was called “Harry,” and a little later a bigger one which the newsmen said had greater authority struck southern Florida and it was called “Hurricane Bess.”

In sending out advices and warnings of West Indian storms, it was not considered necessary to have names, as it was seldom that more than one was in existence at the same time. In 1944, when aircraft reconnaissance began, it became customary to get reports by radio-telephone and voice was used increasingly in other ways by the hurricane hunters. But this gave no particular trouble until September, 1950, when there were three hurricanes in progress at the same time.

Two were in the Atlantic, one north of Bermuda and the other north of Puerto Rico. The third appeared in the eastern Gulf of Mexico. When aircraft were dispatched into these storms and began reporting, there was increasing confusion. Other communications and public advices became mixed and there was much uncertainty as to which storm was meant. Use of letters of the alphabet to identify them was no help, for letters B, C, D, E, and G sound much alike by radio-telephone; also A, J, and H. Numbers were no better because weather reports are sent by numbers and the advisories issued on each storm are numbered, so that the number 3 could be the number of the storm, the number of the advice, an element of the weather, the hour, etc.

The agencies involved in weather and communications in connection with hurricanes met early in 1951 and decided to identify storms by the phonetic alphabet, which gave Able for A, Baker for B, Charlie for C, etc., in accordance with the following table:

Able

Baker

Charlie

Dog

Easy

Fox

George

How

Item

Jig

King

Love

Mike

Nan

Oboe

Peter

Queen

Roger

Sugar

Tare

Uncle

Victor

William

Xray

Yoke

Zebra