Chesapeake-Potomac Hurricane of 1933
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...