A Furious Sky: The Five-Hundred-Year History of America’s Hurricanes

“While Hurricane Audrey is unique in its particulars, from a broader perspective it is an all-too-familiar narrative. Hurricanes are—have always been—an integral, inevitable, and painful part of the American experience.” 

This passage exposes the paradox that will continue throughout Dolin’s text. He argues that all hurricanes are individual, while the motif of their destruction is repetitive. By characterizing hurricanes as “part of the American experience,” Dolin asserts that they are important in the formation of the nation’s character.

“Seen from space, hurricanes are one of the most beautiful and mesmerizing features in the world. Racing around the globe like downy, spinning pinwheels floating silently above the Earth, their magnificence belies their dreadful impact on American history.” 

Dolin describes the beauty of this non-human tormentor from space. From a non-human perspective, a hurricane is an awesome phenomenon and deceptively peaceful-looking with its floating pinwheel aspect. Taking an aerial view of a hurricane allows Dolin to show that no human can contend with its vastness.

“When Columbus first arrived in the New World in 1492, he, like all Europeans, knew nothing about hurricanes […] Europe […] was not visited by massive, swirling, meteorological behemoths worthy of being called hurricanes.” 

Dolin shows that hurricanes were an entirely novel concept to the European adventurers and settlers who arrived on the East Coast of the United States. Arguably, these White men’s bewilderment by these unknown phenomena in the lands they conquered had a lasting impact. Later generations of their successors also had no idea about how to deal with hurricanes, which they viewed as a foreign Other.

“The destiny of the American continent might had shifted substantially, had the hurricane in 1559 not hit Pensacola, and the one in 1565 not slammed into Florida’s east coast.” 

Dolin alerts the reader to the fact that hurricanes have been the nation’s destiny makers. Successive Spanish and French attempts to colonize the land were fended off by the hurricanes’ ruination of food and supplies. Had the hurricanes not hit, and had the French and Spanish been able to find a secure footing in Florida, these invaders may have succeeded in expanding their occupation.

“While American colonists were quite familiar with hurricanes, either through direct experience or by reading about them in the ever-expanding colonial press, they knew nothing about the origins of these storms, the forces that governed their behavior, or how they were structured and progressed over time. The almost universally held theory began and ended with the belief that they were God’s work and […] God worked in mysterious ways.”

Dolin describes how hurricanes were essentially a mystery to America’s early European settlers. Without an understanding about their origins or progression they seemed like random impositions of God. Thus, early colonists felt both powerless and humbled in the face of hurricanes, unlike later generations who tried to deny the extent to which hurricanes could turn their lives upside-down.

“The war against the British was over, the Constitution ratified, and the business of running a new nation well on its way. And yet, the forces of nature continued to plague the infant republic.” 

While America was able to defeat the last colonizers, the British, and liberate itself from their tyranny and exploitations, it was unable to win against the untiring “forces of nature.” These forces continued to battle the Americans with successive hurricanes. Here, Dolin shows that while wars with other humans got more attention, America’s real battles were with the realities of its own weather.

“While these earlier observers had merely hinted at the rotary nature of hurricanes, Redfield marshaled a mountain of data, thus fully demonstrating his clear right to the credit for proving that hurricanes were indeed ‘violent whirlwind.’” 

This passage shows how Redfield, who was influenced by the Enlightenment age’s preference for empirical fact-based research, earned the credit for proving the whirlwind nature of hurricanes, despite that fact that others had made this observation casually. The militaristic image of Redfield marshaling data to prove his point paves the way for what will become a competition amongst hurricane scientists. Although Redfield was open to collaboration, many of his peers like Espy viewed hurricane research as a zero-sum game, causing further loss of life.

“By the mid-1800s, hurricanes were no longer an inscrutable force, but rather an explainable, albeit far from completely understood, phenomenon. Still, broadly understanding a phenomenon and protecting oneself from it are two different things.” 

While progress was made in the 19th century with regard to hurricanes and how they occurred, Americans still lacked the knowledge of how to predict them. Thus, they were as vulnerable to their devastation as ever. This passage shows how populations had to come to terms with the fact that knowledge alone was not enough to protect them from hurricanes.

“While Redfield knew that timely warnings would not ‘disarm the tempest of its power,’ or eliminate its threats to navigation, he firmly believed that much of the tremendous loss due to shipwrecks ‘might be prevented by the exercise of timely and intelligent precaution.’” 

This passage shows how Redfield thought that the invention of the telegraph would boost hurricane damage prevention, as warnings of adverse weather could influence human activity. The idea of advance warning gave Redfield and his contemporaries some feeling of control in being able to manage the uncontrollable fact of a hurricane’s occurrence. Yet in many cases, this increased control was largely illusory.

“In Central Park, ‘more than a hundred noble trees were torn up by the roots, and branches were twisted off everywhere.’ The park’s grounds were strewn with thousands of dead sparrows and other avian corpses, which roving gangs of young boys gathered, hoping to sell them to local restaurants. Telegraph poles and wires crashed to the earth, creating a tangled mess that virtually cut off communication with the rest of the world, isolating New York City.”

This vivid description shows how a hurricane turned New York, one of the most developed cities in the United States, into an anarchic realm, cut-off from the rest of the world. Central Park, once a place of leisure, became the center of the devastation with its trees felled and birds dead. The detail of local boys trying to sell non-edible dead birds to local restaurants paints a desperate picture. Here, Dolin shows that even the most developed and cosmopolitan cities could be uprooted and made primitive by hurricanes.

“Twenty-eight miles long, and only 1-3 miles wide, Galveston was a barrier island composed entirely of sand, marshes, grass, and a smattering of bushes and trees, with the Gulf on one side and Galveston Bay on the other. […] Upon this rather unimpressive geologic foundation a major city had risen—one with a meteorologically tempestuous past.”

Dolin demonstrates man’s propensity to build on vulnerable, hurricane-prone land. At the opening of his chapter on Galveston, he sets up the image of an unstable, marshy land that has been borrowed by humans from the water. It is therefore inevitable that a hurricane will reclaim it for the water.

“Had the Americans listened to the Cubans, they would have heard a far different story from the one they were telling themselves. Way back on August 31, Cuban meteorologists thought the storm had the makings of a hurricane.” 

Dolin here refers to American arrogance in the face of Cuban warnings of the approaching hurricane that was to hit Galveston. The Cubans’ competing story would have overwritten the comforting tale that the Weather Bureau told itself. Rather than pooling all the knowledge available against this mighty force, the Americans chose to wage their own path. This would prove counterproductive and enormously costly.

“Despite such precautions, many of these bodies floated to the surface, where the wind, currents, and waves deposited them on the beach, forming a grisly wrack line. Some of the bodies that washed ashore were interred in place in trenches or shallow graves, but many more, along with other bodies found scattered throughout the island, were heaped into piles and burned. For days, Galveston was shrouded in a miasma of burning flesh and decay that transformed the city into a living hell.” 

The impact of the hurricane on individual bodies is illustrated in this passage. Human bodies, which are privileged above those of other animals, are regarded as completely disposable by the hurricane, which lines them up in “a grisly wrack line.” Given that the casualties are so numerous, humans follow suit in their callous treatment of bodies, incinerating them so that they do not cause disease. Collectively, these factors create the semblance of hell on earth.

“As the storm advanced, fewer and fewer ships were in a position to make useful reports and in a day or two the hurricane was said to be ‘lost,’ that is, there were too few reports to spot the center accurately.” 

This passage shows how the ability to forecast and spread the news of hurricanes through radio technology proved a mixed blessing, as ships stopped going out to sea and collecting weather information. While this saved sailors’ lives, it prevented them from gathering information. Thus, as with numerous other examples in Dolin’s book, this particular innovation was flawed.

“Although a few of the black victims were identified with toe tags, most were not, and all of them were pitched into the trench and sprinkled with lime. When the trench was covered over, no headstone or marker was erected to memorialize the dead—maintaining, in death, the segregation and injustice that these men and women had suffered in life.” 

This passage shows how the racial segregation that dominated southern states, which forced Black Americans into becoming second-class citizens, was exacerbated post-hurricane. While White bodies were privileged enough to be identified and given proper burials, Black bodies were treated anonymously and as disposable when they met with the same misfortune.

“Thus far, the dike has withstood many storms, but none of the magnitude of the 1928 hurricane. What would happen if such a hurricane slammed into Lake Okeechobee today is unknown, although the hope is that the dike would prevent another catastrophe.”

Dolin conjures the notion of unfinished business with regard to a hurricane that took place over 90 years ago. He implies that the infrastructure put in place to deal with hurricanes since the 1928 one is insufficient to deal with a storm of that magnitude. Local residents can only rely on flimsy hope rather than solid evidence to protect them from another catastrophe.

“The disagreement between Mitchell and Pierce is often presented as high drama, painting Mitchell as a villain. It pits the older, arrogant forecaster, mired in the ways of the past, against a brash, younger meteorologist who was schooled in newer methods of forecasting and tried in vain to persuade his superior to see the error of his ways.” 

The legendary disagreements between hurricane forecasters from the Weather Bureau resemble the plots of Hollywood disaster movies. The media, enmeshed in the American tradition of individualism, is eager to pit one man against the other. Here, the disagreement between veteran Mitchell and the younger Pierce with regard to the Great Hurricane of 1938, was a prime opportunity for such treatment. In reality, the conflict got blown out of proportion as no Hollywood-style showdown took place at the time.

“Since time immemorial, wars have spurred innovation and ingenuity while also sowing death and destruction. Nothing focuses the mind like a threat to one’s existence, and World War II certainly had that impact on America, where the imperative to win fueled advances in numerous fields. Meteorology and hurricane science in particular, became one of the beneficiaries.” 

In addition to showing how wars force humans to confront threats to their existence, Dolin implies that wars are a more comprehensible existential threat than hurricanes and have the aura of being more urgent. Although hurricane science deals with a phenomenon that is no less deadly than war, the tendency of humans to underestimate meteorological threats causes the discipline to play second fiddle to military innovation.

“With lives in jeopardy, and the prospect of spending potentially millions of dollars on evacuations, and losing millions more as a result of lost economic output, it is incredibly important that these forecasts be as accurate as possible. That is a difficult task, since, as MIT professor and meteorologist Kerry Emanuel states, ‘no natural phenomenon poses a greater challenge to forecasters than the hurricane.’” 

Dolin exposes the inevitable margin of human error that hurricane forecasters are forced to reckon with. Despite the most advanced computer modeling, the exact path and intensity of hurricanes continues to elude forecasters. Thus, some loss of life and revenue seems inevitable; the task is to minimize it.

“Hurricane forecasters […] take into account the results from a range of models—a so-called multimodel ensemble—weighing and balancing the strength and weaknesses of each to come to a consensus prediction. According to the National Hurricane Center, the ensemble or consensus approach ‘significantly increases[s] forecast accuracy over any individual model by canceling out biases found in individual models.”

The latest hurricane research confirms the theory that collaboration rather than individualism is the best approach for charting the path of hurricanes. Multiple observers and investigations are less vulnerable to fallibility than a single model, run according to an individual’s bias. Unfortunately, this runs counter to potent, deeply-held beliefs in America about individualism and exceptionalism.

“As for Hurricanes Carol, Edna, Hazel and Connie, they received a posthumous honor of a sort. In recognition of their tremendously destructive natures, their names were retired, making them the first of many hurricanes to receive this distinction.” 

Dolin applies a note of humor when stating that notably destructive hurricanes reserve the grim distinction of have their names retired. Thus, the particular hurricanes attached to these names remain etched in human memory, as they are unable to be confused with successive storms. The fact that many hurricanes receive this distinction indicates that destructive hurricanes are a lasting trend.

“By the time Andrew came in 1992, FEMA had a checkered history. It was often starved of funding and viewed as a patronage dumping ground, where good friends or supporters of the president got plum jobs even if they had no experience or skills that would recommend them to their posts.” 

Dolin communicates the shocking fact that an essential federal relief agency which provides hurricane aftercare is corrupt. The promotion of unqualified political cronies in this department, as opposed to other branches of government, indicates how hurricanes are not taken seriously enough by the federal government. This corruption at the top sets a bad example for state and local authorities.

“As the water rose, many people were forced into their attics, or had to break through to their roofs to escape. Some of those who couldn’t break through ended up drowning in their own homes.” 

Dolin describes the horror that was Hurricane Katrina of 2005 in this harrowing passage. the water level had become so high that people could only survive if they perched on their roofs like birds. Those who were not fortunate enough to be able to do this faced the shocking prospects of drowning in their homes, the structures that were built to protect them.