Betty's Critters - & History Views

   With Henri threatening New England, it might be time to look at the 1933 Chesapeake-Potomac hurricane that created Assateague Island as we know it today.  On August 21, early in the morning, the Weather Bureau issued storm warnings from Cape Hatteras, North Carolina to Boston, Massachusetts; and a few hours later extended them south to Southport, North Carolina.  The storm became a category 4 hurricane, according to today's scale, landing in northeastern North Carolina.  The eye of the hurricane crossed over Norfolk, for the first time since 1821, and weakened to a tropical storm just south of Washington, DC.  The storm then curved to the north, going across Pennsylvania and New York.  As it left New York and entered the Atlantic again, it became an extratropical storm, and moved across the Atlantic provinces of Canada before dying out on August 28.    Widespread damage to the tune of over $40 million ($850 million today) was caused, and a...

   My grandfather had a bathroom built onto his house on Peterson Street on Chinchoteague in the fall of 1961, with monetary assistance from his children, so that we grandkids wouldn't have to go out to the out house during the day, or use the "slop jar" at night.  Immediately after the Ash Wednesday Storm, my 5-year-old mind wondered if having a bathroom at Pop-Pop's house had caused the flood.  -  I realized a couple of years later that was ridiculous, but I remember asking Mom and Dad, if the indoor toilet had caused the flood. (The odd thinking of children!)    The Weather Bureau did not anticipate the murderous capacity of the different pressure systems that converged over the Eastern Seaboard beginning on Monday, March 5th, and breaking up on Friday, March 9th.  The Weather Bureau also overlooked the fact that the storm was happening during the Perigean Spring Tide, when the sun and moon were aligned, and the moon was at it's closest point t...