Good evening everyone. Sorry that I’ve not updated the site earlier in the evening, but I was hard at work preparing for this particular blog post. Part of the work involved getting my hurricane tracking software to load on my computer. I had some struggles getting it installed, and I also tried to find other tracking software. I guess I’m going to have to get an iPad to get the latest and greatest hurricane tracking software for a Mac. Well, anyway, I’ll get into this later.

The reason I was looking to get my hurricane tracking software running was because I had seen on the Weather Channel, historic tracks of hurricanes that impacted the East Coast of the United States from North Carolina to New England. Some of those tracks included the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944, Hurricane Gloria, Hurricane Bob (1991), Hurricane Emily (1993), and Hurricane Alex (2004). Well, the segment got me thinking. So, I first went to my database on Hurricaneville to find storms that existed close by to Earl’s current location.

I found in that group, Hurricane Connie (1955), Hurricane Betsy (1965), and Hurricane Edna (1953). These storms were located within one degree of latitude and one degree of longitude of where Earl is presently located. This was using the coordinates from Earl’s 8:00 PM EDT Advisory on Tuesday night. Then, I went into my storm tracking software, Eye of the Storm 3000 to go a bit deeper. First I searched for storms that were within 25 nautical miles of the position Earl was in earlier this evening. Here is a map of tracks from several storms that were included in the bunch that I found in the query.

Connie was a storm in 1955 that made landfall along the North Carolina coast, and moved inland. Betsy was a storm from 1965 that followed a similar track to Hurricane Andrew in 1992. It went across South Florida, and then went into the Central Gulf Coast flooding much of New Orleans. You could even compare that track to Hurricane Katrina, which came across Florida as well, but as a much weaker storm. Edna was a storm from 1953 that steered out to sea as well as Hurricane Marilyn, which was a devastating Category Three Hurricane on the Saffir-Simpson Scale that hit the Northeast Caribbean before turning out to sea in 1995. Marilyn followed right on the heels of another devastating storm, Hurricane Luis.

I then went another 25 miles and got several more interesting storms including Hurricane Hugo (1989), Hurricane Floyd (1999), and Hurricane Gloria (1985). All three of these storms were ones that I could remember very well. All three had some sort of impact on the East Coast of the United States. Hugo strengthened rapidly over the Gulf Stream after weakening while assaulting Puerto Rico. It then crashed ashore near Charleston, South Carolina with winds of 140 miles per hour on September 22, 1989. Hurricane Floyd was more of a rainmaker, but for a while, it created tremendous trouble along the East Coast of the United States. Floyd created the largest peace time evacuation in United States history as some 3 million people were on the move to try and escape the storm. After having winds of 150 miles per hour east of Florida, the storm weakened, but it caused tremendous flooding in North Carolina and New Jersey. after making landfall on September 16, 1999. Gloria was originally dubbed the “Storm of the Century” at one point, and had winds of 150 mph before weakening to just have winds of 110 miles per hour when it hit the Outer Banks of North Carolina, and went up into Long Island and New England on September 27, 1985.

Then, I went another 50 miles out to find several notable storms within 100 miles of the current location of Earl. Fran was another storm from the recent uptick in tropical activity since 1995. It was a Category Three Hurricane that slammed into the Wilmington, North Carolina area of the U.S. East Coast, and proceeded to move inland across the Tar Heel State in September 1996. Hurricane Donna was a Category Five Hurricane at one point, and menaced the East Coast of the United States after affecting Bahamas and Florida before impacting the Carolinas and New England in 1960. Finally, we have Hurricane Ione, which was included in a series of storms in 1955 that impacted the Carolinas.

Then, I took three pre-1950 era storms that were within 100 miles of Earl’s 8:00 PM EDT location, and found the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 (Storm #2), the Long Island Express of 1938 (Storm #4), and the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 (Storm #3). The Labor Day Hurricane was the first Category Five storm on record to impact the mainland United States. The storm headed west across the Bahamas, and then into the Florida Keys destroying the Florida East Coast Railroad, and killing some 400 people including many World War I Veterans, who were working in the Keys. The Long Island Express was a devastating Category Three Storm that roared up the East Coast at near 70 miles per hour before it came ashore in Long Island and New England. The storm caused tremendous damage, and left some 600 people dead. Finally, the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 followed a path up the East Coast as well causing $100 million dollars in damage at the time, and leaving some 390 people dead.

Other historic storms that have traveled up the Eastern Seaboard include the Great Hurricane of 1821, which was the last major hurricane to directly impact New Jersey, and the Great Hurricane of 1815.