Talk:1780-1789 Atlantic hurricane seasons

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[edit] 1785

From the Annual Register for 1786:

[January 31] The last reports from North America are full of the distresses occasioned by the heavy falls of rain in September and October last. At Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, the waters rose to an alarming height. At Dover, the waters rose about 15 feet perpendicular above the usual flowing of the tide, and carried off several hundred thousand lumber. It destroyed some valuable stores, seven mills and two bridges.
At Portsmouth, in Virginia, a most tremendous gale added to the freshes carried several vessels into the fields and woods, where some of them can never be got off. The damage is estimated at 30,000 l.

I suspect from context these are contemporary reports of the storms being reported three months late, rather than aftereffects being back-dated by the Register's editors. The detail may be of some interest; £30,000 is about $140,000 in contemporary currency, and in real terms perhaps something like fifty to a hundred million current dollars. Shimgray | talk | 08:08, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

Nice find. I couldn't find an exact conversion, though through inflation that is about $124 million in 2005 USD. Hurricanehink (talk) 14:57, 16 April 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Another 1785 issue

"I. On August 24, an eastward moving hurricane hit St. Croix. It continued to hit Puerto Rico, Jamaica, and Cuba before last being seen on the 29th."

My geography may be off, but it seems this storm is moving westward rather than eastward. I know that wind is described by the direction it comes from, but I know of no such convention for hurricanes. Danthemankhan 15:13, 5 June 2007 (UTC)

Two possible interpretations - a) it's a typo; b) the wind was eastwards but the hurricane was heading west, which would make sense if the centre was to the north of the place reporting eastward winds? Shimgray | talk | 19:25, 5 June 2007 (UTC)