Part 7
The season of 1933 established an all-time record of twenty-one tropical storms in the West Indian region. Many of them reached the Gulf States or the South Atlantic Coast and the controversy about sending ships into hurricanes was resumed, resulting in legislation containing the authority, but President Roosevelt vetoed it. By 1937 the criticism of the warnings and the arguments about Coast Guard cutters began again. This time it involved Senators and Congressmen from Gulf States and finally the White House was embroiled.
In August, 1937, a delegation of citizens came to Washington and brought their complaints direct to the White House. The President arranged a conference so that the storm hunters, Coast Guard officials and others could explain again why vessels should not go out into the Gulf of Mexico to get data when the presence of a hurricane was suspected. Actually, ships were being saved by the warnings which kept them out of danger, and the criticism was based on fear of hurricanes rather than any deficiency of the warnings with respect to the coastal areas.
When the conference was held at the White House, the President was busy with other matters and James Roosevelt presided. The President had given him a note to the effect that he should receive the delegation in a most pleasant manner but that it would be dangerous and fruitless to try to send Coast Guard vessels into hurricanes.
The President's note to his son said in part:
"Make it clear that I would veto the bill again and that instead of a hurricane patrol the safest and cheapest thing would be a study of hurricanes from all of the given points on land and around the Gulf of Mexico. This might involve sending special study groups to points in Mexico, such as Tampico, Valparaiso, Tehuantepec, Yucatan, Campeche, also to the west end of Cuba and possibly to some of the smaller islands in the region. What the Congressmen and others in Texas want is study and information and it is my thought that this can be done more cheaply and much more safely on land instead of sending a ship into the middle of a hurricane."
The delegation gathered in an outer office at the White House. It happened that the Coast Guard had a new Commandant, Admiral Waesche, who had not been advised of the views of the White House, the Coast Guard, and the Weather Bureau. In the few minutes before the conference started, there was no opportunity to inform the Admiral, for he was engaged in conversation with a group of Senators and Congressmen. As soon as the conferees were assembled, James Roosevelt called on the Admiral to speak first. To the amazement of all present, he indorsed the idea in full and promised to send cutters out in the Gulf whenever a request was received from the Weather Bureau. Nobody knew what to do next, so James adjourned the conference, and after everybody had shaken hands and departed, he went back to his father to explain what had happened.
Thus began a brief period of hunting hurricanes in the Gulf of Mexico with Coast Guard cutters. During the next two seasons, the Weather Bureau forecasters notified the Coast Guard when observations were needed. In each instance a cutter left port in accordance with the agreement, but as soon as the vessel was in the open Gulf the master was in supreme command and he would not deliberately put his ship and crew in jeopardy. Cutters went out in a few cases, but most of the disturbances to be reconnoitered were crossing the southern Gulf, out of range of merchantmen on routes to Gulf ports. In sailing directly toward the center under these conditions, the Coast Guard commander would have been traveling into the most dangerous sector, and the distance he could make good in a day in rough water could not have been much larger than the normal travel of a tropical storm, certainly not a safe margin.
Irate citizens complained to Washington, first, that the Weather Bureau refused to call on the Coast Guard for observations; and, second, that the Coast Guard refused to carry out the Weather Bureau's instructions. After two or three years, no special information of any particular value was obtained and the scheme was forgotten.
In accordance with the ideas expressed by President Roosevelt, but without any support from Congress, some study groups and other special arrangements secured useful results on coasts and islands, but it was obvious after 1940 that automatic instruments for exploration of the upper atmosphere and reconnaissance by aircraft offered the best prospects for improvement in the service.
The most destructive hurricane during this period devastated large areas of Long Island and New England in September, 1938, taking six hundred lives and destroying property valued at about a third of a billion dollars. This event aroused general criticism of the storm hunters for two reasons. First, this disturbance, while it was in the West Indies and during its course as far as Hatteras, behaved like others of great intensity, but from that point northward its forward motion was without precedent. During the day when it passed into New England, its progressive motion exceeded fifty miles an hour, hence little time remained for the issue of warnings after its increased rapidity of motion was detected. Second, the people were absorbed in news of negotiations in Europe to prevent the outbreak of a world war, and storm news on the radio was largely suppressed to make way for reports of the European crisis.
Here it might be said that the storm hunters lost another battle, but it is probable that the loss of life in this hurricane would have exceeded that at Galveston in 1900 if there had been no real improvement in the warning service in the meantime.
_6._ THE EYE OF THE HURRICANE
"_--the whirlwind's heart of peace._" --Tennyson
After the White House conference in 1937 about sending ships into hurricanes, some of the Weather Bureau forecasters expressed the idea that the best method of tracking hurricanes would be by airplane. What they had in mind was flying around the edge of the storm and getting three or more bearings from which the location of the center could be accurately estimated. Nothing came of the idea at the time but after World War II broke out in Europe, the talk about use of planes increased. It was the Weather Bureau's plan to contract with commercial flyers to go out and get the observations on request from the forecasters. But no one seriously considered sending planes into the centers of hurricanes. No one knew what would happen to the plane. There was no very definite information as to what the flyer would encounter in the upper layers in the region around the center.
Of course, it was known that at the surface of the earth or the sea there was a small calm region in the center--an oddity in the weather, for no other kind of large storm has such a center. The tornado may have, but it is a very small storm in comparison with a hurricane. Its writhing, twisting funnel at the vortex is hollow, according to the testimony of a few men who have looked up into it and lived to tell about it. In the tropical storm, however, nothing was known about the central winds in the upper levels. There was no proof that strong winds did not blow outward from the center up there and a plane would be thrown into the ring of powerful winds around the eye. The only way to find out was to fly into it and have a look, but there was no one at the moment who wanted to venture into it.
On the outer fringes of the hurricane, where light, gusty winds blew across deep ocean waters, stirred at the surface by giant sea swells, the hurricane hunters were fairly well satisfied with their findings. In the middle regions, where deluges of rain slanted through raging winds and low-flying clouds, the grim fact was that they knew amazingly little about what was going on in the upper layers. Their balloons sent up to explore the racing winds above were lost in thick clouds before they had risen more than a few hundred feet.
On beyond, somewhere in that last inner third of the whirlwind, the increasing gales rose to a deadly peak and torrents of rain merged with the spindrift of mountainous wave crests to blot out the view of the observer. Within this whirling ring of air and water lay the vortex. When the mariner entered, sometimes slowly, but more often suddenly, the wind and rain ceased and usually there would be no violence except the rise and fall of the sea surface, like a boiling pot on a scale which was huge in fact but small in proportion to the extent of the storm itself. The entire whirling body of air would likely be bigger than the state of Ohio; the calm central region might be the size of the city of Columbus.
Here in this inner third were the mysteries. Where could all this air go--streaming so violently around and in toward that mysterious center but never getting there? It must go up, the storm hunters argued, for what else could produce all this tremendous rainfall if not the upward rush of moist air to be cooled in the upper levels? And then, why no rain or wind in the central region? Some argued that the air must descend in the vortex, growing warmer and dry in descent, but why the descent? And finally, if the air was moving upward in all this vast area outside the calm center, what finally became of it?
Even if the storm hunters were unable to answer these questions, they could render a service of enormous value if they could track the storm and predict its movements. But they knew that the only sure way to track a hurricane over the ocean was to find its center and follow it persistently and accurately from day to day. Tests had shown that it was not practical to send ships into the storm to find its center and report by radio. Ships couldn't move fast enough. If the storm hunters had known enough about it, they might have concluded that a plane could enter the storm in the least dangerous sector and find its way swiftly to the calm center through some upper level without being hurled into the angry sea. If it reached the center of the vortex--usually called the "eye of the hurricane"--the navigator might be able to see the sky and the sun by day, the stars by night. Here the pilot might be able to figure out his position, as an ocean-going vessel does on some occasions, and that would be the location of the storm to be placed on the charts of the storm hunters in the weather office. But nobody took it seriously until after the United States got into the Second World War.
When the request for funds to hire commercial flyers in hurricane emergencies was presented to the Bureau of the Budget, the examiners asked why the Weather Bureau didn't try to get the co-operation of the Army and Navy. Why couldn't they have their pilots carry out the flights as needed? There was some talk about it in 1942, but at that time there were no experienced Army or Navy pilots to spare.
Naturally, the military pilots who thought about flying into the eyes of hurricanes wanted to know what it was like in the upper levels and in the center. Air Force pilots who expected to go on bombing missions to Germany thought it might be more dangerous flying into the vortex of a hurricane than over an enemy stronghold with the air full of flak and Nazi fighters rising on all sides. Nobody looked upon the assignment with any enthusiasm. One discouraging fact was that the reports of shipmasters who had been in the eyes of hurricanes didn't agree very well. Few of them had the ability to describe what they saw. And those who had the ability told a story that was not reassuring. For example, one of the first was the master of the ship _Idaho_, caught in the China Sea in September, 1869, as a typhoon struck. With little of the precious sea room needed to maneuver, the ship soon was obliged to lie to and take it. Afterward, when by some miracle the ship had made its way to shore, the master calmly described his experiences while they were fresh:
"With one wild, unearthly, soul-chilling shriek the wind suddenly dropped to a calm, and those who had been in these seas before knew that we were in the terrible _vortex_ of the typhoon, the dreaded center of the whirlwind. Till then the sea had been beaten down by the wind, and only boarded the vessel when she became completely unmanageable; but now the waters, relieved from all restraint, rose in their own might. Ghastly gleams of lightning revealed them piled up on every side in rough, pyramidal masses, mountain high--the revolving circle of wind, which everywhere inclosed them, causing them to boil and tumble as though they were being stirred in some mighty cauldron. The ship, no longer blown over on her side, rolled and pitched, and was tossed about like a cork. The sea rose, toppled over, and fell with crushing force upon her decks. Once she shipped immense bodies of water over both bows, both quarters, and the starboard gangway at the same moment. Her seams opened fore and aft. Both above and below, men were pitched about the decks and many of them injured. At twenty minutes before eight o'clock the vessel entered the vortex; at twenty minutes past nine o'clock it had passed and the hurricane returned blowing with renewed violence from the north, veering to the west. The ship was now only an unmanageable wreck."
For many years, the classic case was the obliging typhoon that moved across the Philippines with its center passing directly over the fully-equipped weather observatory in Manila. It happened on October 20, 1882. The wind which came ahead of the center was of destructive violence, reaching above 120 miles an hour in a final mad rush from the west-northwest before the calm set in. It was not an absolute calm. There were alternate gusts and lulls. The way the winds acted led the observer to think that the center was about sixteen miles in diameter. He said:
"The most striking thing about it was the sudden change in temperature and humidity. The temperature jumped from 75° to 88°. The air was saturated at 75° but the humidity dropped from 100% to 53% in the center and then rose to 100% again as the center passed. When the wind suddenly ceased at the beginning of the calm and the sun came out, many people opened their windows but they slammed them shut right away, because the hot, dry air seemed to burn the skin."
For more than fifty years after this, there were arguments about the reasons for these changes in temperature and humidity. Some scientists claimed that they were caused merely by the heating of the sun in a clear sky and that the air which preceded and followed the center was cooled and saturated by the rain. Some of the Jesuit scientists at Manila did not agree. One weatherman showed, for example, that if they took air at 75° and 100% humidity and heated it to 88°, the humidity would fall only to about 61% and that the air at Manila at that time of year had never had such a low humidity (53%), even when the sun was shining.
The general conclusion was that the air descends in the eye of the tropical storm. At least, they were convinced that it descended in the Manila typhoon. When air descends, it is compressed, coming into lower levels where the pressure is higher. This compression causes its temperature to rise and the air then has a bigger capacity for moisture. In other words, the air becomes warmer and drier. There never has been full agreement on this question. Certainly, in some cases, the air is not warmer and drier in the center.
In later years, typhoon centers passed over other observatories and had various effects. However, one struck Formosa on September 16, 1912, and the calm center passed over the observatory long after the sun had gone down. In this case, the temperature jumped from 75° to 94° and this could not be explained by the direct heat of the sun. But there were different results in other cases and in one instance the temperature fell a little.
All of these observations were confined to ground level and what the observer could see from there or from shipboard, where he was being bounced around by violent seas and sometimes was thoroughly drenched by the mountainous waves breaking over the decks. One example was the _Idaho_ in the typhoon in 1869.
A half-century later, two British destroyers were trapped in the same region by an unheralded typhoon. Setting out for Shanghai in the early morning, they rounded the Shantung Promontory and headed across the Yellow Sea at fifteen knots, with sunlight gleaming on the water ahead. The weather looked favorable, barometer high, wind light, but it failed to stay that way very long. By ten o'clock there was a strong wind on the port beam, blowing gustily from the east, and an ominous rising sea. Reducing speed to eleven knots, the commander of the destroyer in the lead--called the _Exe_--found by dead reckoning that he was only about eight miles from land and, although he was running almost parallel to the coast, their situation was beginning to look dangerous. He had to make a decision as to his future course.
Among other disturbing factors was the design of the ships. These destroyers were of a new type, with a large forecastle which made it likely that they would drag their anchors if they tried to lie-to in a sheltered place on that exposed coast. The two ships held their course. By noon the visibility had dropped to less than a mile. The commander feared that he would be unable to identify any land he might see through the increasing gloom and concluded that his chances of finding a safe shelter among the rock-bound islands along the coast was fast becoming nil. So he signaled to the other destroyer to head fast for the open sea. In the next hour, the wind and sea mounted rapidly and he was certain that they were being overtaken by the dangerous sector of the typhoon. Now they were in real trouble!
His first lieutenant was the last of his officers out of school, so the commander asked him about the law of storms and the proper course under the circumstances. According to the latest books which the lieutenant had studied, they should have steamed toward the northwest but this would have thrown them onto a lee shore. The commander decided that there was no choice except to hold their course and run the chance of going into the dreaded center of the typhoon. So they got busy, doubly securing all movable gear and seeing that all was snug for a frightening trip into the unknown. The commander was annoyed, not so much by the battering the ship was taking as by the cheerful attitude of the lieutenant, who seemed to be looking forward to this new experience.
In this miserable situation they fought heavy gales and towering seas for hours. The other destroyer had been lost from view but now appeared close on their beam. She assumed strange attitudes in the growing darkness. "At times," the commander said, "she would be poised on the crest of a great wave, her fore part high above the sea and her keel visible up to the conning tower; the after part, also high in the roaring wind, leaving her propellers racing far out of the water. Then she would take a dive and an intervening wave would blot out this 'merry picture,' and then, to our relief as the wave passed, a mast would appear waving on the other side and then we would catch sight of her funnels and finally her hull, still above water." As darkness closed in, the crew of the _Exe_ were glad they could no longer see the other destroyer for it made them vividly conscious that their own little ship was going through equally dangerous contortions.
During this time the destroyer _Exe_ had suffered much damage. The upper deck had been swept clear. Much water was getting below and the pumps were choked. The commander was weary from holding on to the bridge and trying to keep his balance. The crew was frightened more than ever by the increasing power of the storm and the inexorable approach of the unknown horrors in the center.
The awful night passed in this terrifying manner, with the barometer steadily going lower, and the quartermaster straining to keep the craft on course. With powerful winds full in his face and drenched by spray, he managed to hold the ship most of the time and made the best use of her high bows. When he failed and allowed the ship to get a few points off course, the steep waves threw her on her beam ends and came crashing along the upper decks, making it a tough job to get her back with her nose against the elements, and the high bows as a sort of shield against the brutal sea. Besides, the compass light had been beaten out and in the blackness of the storm he had no way of judging the direction except by the crash of the wind and water in his face.
In a storm like this, the crew think that they are probably on their last voyage. They can feel tremendous masses of water strike with immense force and, after the shock, the vessel shivering as though the hull had given way, leaving them on the verge of diving toward the bottom of the sea. Sometimes the _Exe_ was mostly out of water--they could sense it in the darkness--and then she took what they called a "belly-flopper" and every man felt sick, fearing the end had come and, after a moment, fearing just the opposite--that it would not be the end, after all, and they would have to take more of the same.
Now the lieutenant crawled out from below and, by a series of lurches between gusts, pulled himself to the side of his commander. "Things look better," he shouted. "The barometer is up a little." But soon after that he found he had made an error. He had read it an inch too high. Actually, it had dropped almost an inch in three hours, showing that the center must now be drawing near. Shortly the rain ceased and the wind dropped. At 7:00 A.M. they were passing into the vortex.
The ocean now presented a fantastic spectacle. They could see for several miles--a cauldron of steep towering cones of water with spray at the crests--a brightening sky over a chaotic sea. Some of these columns of water would clash together on different courses and produce a weird effect. The wind became light and a few tired birds sought haven on deck. This scene lasted only ten to twenty minutes and then the dreaded squalls ahead of the opposite semicircle of the typhoon began to hit the vessel. By 7:20 A.M. the full force of the most vicious gales was bringing new miseries to the exhausted crew.