The Hurricane of 1938 -- a mini-post

Dear readers,


My apartment looks like it was hit by an earthquake and then a hurricane! Not because of the actual events, but because I am moving to a new apartment on Wednesday, and everything is half-packed and messy. Here in Cambridge, we have been fairly lucky... it seems like everyone prepared for Hurricane Irene, but all we got was rain and high winds.


Because of my move, I haven't had the time or energy to finish the upcoming Very Brief History of Cambridge, 1900-2000 post. If you want some topical Cambridge history, take a look at this news reel from the Great Hurricane of 1938, the biggest hurricane to affect the area on record. While locals called it the Great Hurricane, others named it the New England Hurricane, the Yankee Clipper, or the Long Island Express. The current conventions for naming hurricanes using an alphabetical list of people's names has its origins in the 1950's.(1)






(1) "Worldwide Tropical Cyclone Names," National Weather Service online, http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames_history.shtml accessed 8-28-11