The Hurricane Hunters

by Ivan Ray Tannehill

This case shows how hard it was to make predictions without radio. During the approach of the Galveston hurricane, the storm hunters knew the position of its center only when it crossed Cuba and again when it struck the Texas Coast. While it was in the Gulf, weather reports from coastal points indicated that there was a hurricane outside, moving westward, but the winds, clouds, tides, and waves at those points would have been about the same with a big storm far out over the water as with a small storm close to land. Soon after the Galveston disaster there was a growing hope that wireless messages from ships at sea would provide this vital information in time for adequate warnings.

Progress in the use of wireless at sea really was fast, although it seemed very slow to the storm hunters at the time. The first ocean-weather report to the Weather Bureau was received from the Steamship New York, in the western Atlantic, on December 3, 1905. It was not until August 26, 1909, that a vessel at sea reported from the inside of a hurricane. It was the Steamship Cartago, near the Coast of Yucatan. The master estimated the winds at one hundred miles an hour. This big storm struck the Mexican Coast on August 28, drowned fifteen hundred people and created alarming tides and very rough seas all along the Texas Coast. Thousands of people at Galveston and at many other points between there and Brownsville stood on the Gulf front and watched the tremendous waves breaking on the beaches.

Gradually the number of weather reports by radio increased and the work of the storm hunters improved. World War I and enemy submarines stopped the messages from ships temporarily, but after 1919 weather maps were extended over the oceans. Other countries co-operated in the exchange of messages and the centers of storms were spotted, even when far out of range of the nearest coast or island. Cautionary warnings were sent to vessels in the line of advance. By this means, the service of the storm hunters was of extreme value in the safety of life and property afloat as well as on shore.

By 1930 another trouble had developed serious proportions as a consequence of this efficiency in the issuance of warnings. Vessel masters soon learned that it was dangerous to be caught in the predicted path of a hurricane, and when a warning was received by radio, they steamed out of the line of peril as quickly as possible. Thus, as the storm advanced, fewer and fewer ships were in a position to make useful reports and in a day or two the hurricane was said to be “lost,” that is, there were too few reports to spot the center accurately, or in some cases there were no reports at all. The storm hunters could only place it vaguely somewhere in a large ocean area. When it is impossible to track the center of a hurricane accurately, it is impossible also to issue accurate warnings.

In 1926, a hurricane crossed the Atlantic from the Cape Verde Islands to the Bahamas and threatened southern Florida. After it left the latter islands, weather reports from ships became scarce and the center was too close to the coast for safety when hurricane warnings were issued, although everybody in southern Florida knew that there was a severe storm outside. More than one hundred lives were lost in Miami and property damage reached one hundred million dollars. In 1928, another big hurricane started in the vicinity of the Cape Verdes, swept across the Atlantic, and devastated Puerto Rico and parts of southern Florida. Loss of life was placed at three hundred in Puerto Rico and at two thousand in Florida, mostly in the vicinity of Lake Okeechobee.

In these years and up to 1932, several hurricanes were “lost” in the Gulf of Mexico and citizens of the coastal areas began making demands for a storm patrol. They wanted the U. S. Coast Guard to send cutters out to search for disturbances or explore their interiors and send information by radio to the Weather Bureau. There was opposition from the forecasters—they didn’t know what they would do with the cutters. If they had enough ship reports to know where to send the cutters, they would not need the latters’ reports, and if they had no reports, they would not know where to send the vessels. Besides, it was the government’s business to keep ships out of storms—not to send them deliberately into danger.

The season of 1933 established an all-time record of twenty-one tropical storms in the West Indian region. Many of them reached the Gulf States or the South Atlantic Coast and the controversy about sending ships into hurricanes was resumed, resulting in legislation containing the authority, but President Roosevelt vetoed it. By 1937 the criticism of the warnings and the arguments about Coast Guard cutters began again. This time it involved Senators and Congressmen from Gulf States and finally the White House was embroiled.

In August, 1937, a delegation of citizens came to Washington and brought their complaints direct to the White House. The President arranged a conference so that the storm hunters, Coast Guard officials and others could explain again why vessels should not go out into the Gulf of Mexico to get data when the presence of a hurricane was suspected. Actually, ships were being saved by the warnings which kept them out of danger, and the criticism was based on fear of hurricanes rather than any deficiency of the warnings with respect to the coastal areas.

When the conference was held at the White House, the President was busy with other matters and James Roosevelt presided. The President had given him a note to the effect that he should receive the delegation in a most pleasant manner but that it would be dangerous and fruitless to try to send Coast Guard vessels into hurricanes.

The President’s note to his son said in part: