Good thing that morons like McKitten weren’t around to blame the storm on democracy.
For those who live in the Garden State and the New York City area, and think that a major hurricane isn’t possible here better think again. This weekend commemorates the 185th anniversary of the Great Hurricane of 1821. On September 3rd that summer, a Category Four Hurricane rapidly moved up the east coast. As a matter of fact, the storm moved from North Carolina’s outer banks to the New York City area in just ten hours. This storm struck the Cape May area of extreme South Jersey, and moved up along a path that is covered by the Garden State Parkway today.
The Great Hurricane of 1821 was a classic Cape Verde storm. Originating off the African coast, the hurricane was picked up by ships near Grand Turk Island in the Turks and Caicos Islands. The storm headed northward, where on September 3rd, it was in Cape Hatteras by dawn, the Virginia Capes by noon, and in Delaware Bay by mid-afternoon according to the book, Great Storms of the Jersey Shore written by Larry Savadore and Margaret Thomas Buchholz. Coastal areas in the tip of Southern New Jersey such as Cape May were separated from the rest of that Southern Jersey Peninsula while heavy tree damage was reported on Long Beach Island in Ocean County.
According to an article written by Kirk Moore and Todd Bates of the Asbury Park Press on July 23, 2006, Cape May was known as Cape Island, which was appropriate, especially when a “wall of water surged across the peninsula from Delaware Bay to the sea.” Today, tourists visit the Cape May Point and its lighthouse, a place where storm surge, wind and waves forced residents including fishermen, farmers, and children to flee for higher ground.
It was the only time on record that a major hurricane has impacted the Garden State. The hurricane produced 100 mph winds as far west as Philadelphia, and a thirteen foot storm surge in what is now today, the Battery Park section of lower Manhattan. The surge was the highest ever recorded in New York Harbor. Continuing further to the north, the Great Hurricane of 1821 didn’t stop there. It roared through New England as well producing winds between minimal Category One strength, and strong Category Two strength on the Saffir-Simpson Scale.
As mentioned in the book, Hurricane Watch by Jack Williams and former National Hurricane Center director, Bob Sheets, winds were reported by amateur meteorologist, William C. Redfield to be between seventy-five and one hundred miles per hour in Connecticut. Redfield noted a peculiar quality about the damage created by this storm in Litchfield County, Connecticut as well as other parts of the Nutmeg state. It finished up by heading into the rest of New England, particularly, Worcester Massachussetts.
