The Boy with the U. S. Weather Men Part 34

"Slowly down and across the white, faintly ruled paper wrapped about the revolving drum, I watched the long-shanked, awkward pen of the barograph in our Weather Bureau station at Galveston. In the jerky, scrawling fashion of a child writing his first copy on a slate, I saw the pen gradually draw what looked like a rough profile map--a long declining plateau, a steep and then a steeper slope, a jagged ugly valley--

"The valley of the shadow of death!"

The boys cl.u.s.tered closer round the speaker, the man who had seen and lived through, the Galveston hurricane.

"We knew well, the three of us in the Weather Bureau," he went on, "that descending zig-zag line meant that the hurricane, then beginning to rage over our heads, would increase in fury and in ruin, until the other wall of that strangely-drawn valley should begin to form under the halting pen. Thus we watched and waited.

"'Read the wind velocity,' my chief said to me.

"I focused a gla.s.s on the recorder, holding a lantern in my other hand.

"'Ninety miles an hour, sir,' I said.

"'It'll be a good deal more than that,' he answered. 'I only hope we don't have a repet.i.tion of 1900.'"

"That was the worst ever, wasn't it, sir?" asked Anton.

"It was the most destructive storm that the United States ever saw," the Galveston weather observer answered, "but, as a storm, it wasn't nearly as violent as the one we've just been through."

The speaker, who had his arm in a sling and who was still frail and weak from the injuries he had received during the hurricane, looked round at the boys. Being the Forecaster's nephew, he had come to his uncle's house to recuperate and the work of the League had fired his imagination.

"Tell them of the 1900 storm first," said the Forecaster.

"You tell them, Uncle," his nephew replied; "you remember that better than I do, and then I'll tell the boys my adventures in last week's storm."

"Yes," put in Fred, "you tell us, Mr. Levin."

"Very well," said the founder of the League, and he began:

"I suppose, measured by the loss of life and property, the Galveston hurricane of 1900 was the worst catastrophe that wind and water has ever brought to America. On Galveston Island alone, over six thousand people were killed, and five thousand more in the inland coast country. The ruin and loss of life was caused by a storm wave, which swept in from the Gulf in advance of the hurricane's vortex. This wave, four feet in depth, struck the already submerged island with almost irresistible force and entirely destroyed the city for ten blocks inland. Over five hundred city blocks were ravaged and two hundred blocks were laid level to the ground. Three thousand three hundred and thirty-six houses were destroyed."

"Where did it begin, sir?" asked Anton. "In the West Indies?"

"Undoubtedly," the Forecaster answered, "but, unlike last week's storm, we knew very little about it, before it came. Three days before the hurricane struck Galveston, storm warnings were hoisted, although, at that time, advices from Cuba showed that it had developed but little force. By the next afternoon it was beginning to wake up to true hurricane strength and the steamer _Louisiana_ almost foundered in the middle of the Gulf.

"In Galveston, our barometer commenced falling that afternoon, and by next morning the situation began to look serious. The barometer was still falling steadily and high cirrus clouds of the mares'-tails variety, that always run in advance of the hurricane, were clearly marked.

"That afternoon over the waters of the Gulf came the long low swell, each wave one to five minutes apart, which is the sure sign of trouble.

Though the wind was from the north and north-west, the swell from the south-east steadily increased and the tide began to rise. Before mid-night, the Weather Bureau had sent warnings to the newspapers to urge special precautions for the next day, as a rising tide and possible hurricane threatened disaster. At breakfast, the next morning, every one in Galveston read these warnings, none too soon, for at nine o'clock, the edge of the storm struck the city.

"The wind was steadily rising, and shifting by gusts at five minute intervals, until one o'clock in the afternoon, when it reached storm velocity. After that, it began to increase in fury. Every subscriber of the telephone company was warned personally from the Weather Bureau.

Hundreds of people who could not be reached by telephone besieged the Weather Bureau, seeking advice. Dr. Cline, the chief of the station, who had been directing all precautionary measures since five o'clock in the morning, went to his home for lunch at half-past three o'clock that historic afternoon. The wind was then blowing fifty miles an hour.

"'I reached home,' wrote Dr. Cline, 'and found the water around my residence waist-deep. At once, I went to work a.s.sisting people, who were not securely located, into my residence, which, being large and very strongly built, I thought could weather wind and tide. About 6:30 P. M., one of the other weather observers, who had been on duty since the previous midnight, reached my residence, where he found the water neck deep. He informed me that the barometer had fallen below 29.00, that no further messages could be got off to Washington, or anywhere else, as all the wires were down, and that he had advised every one whom he could see, to go to the center of the city; also, he thought that we had better make an attempt in this direction.

"'The roofs of houses and timbers, however, were flying through the streets as if they were paper, and it appeared suicidal to attempt a journey through the flying timbers. Just at this time, the anemometer in the Weather Bureau office registered one hundred miles an hour and blew away soon after. In the next hour the wind rose to a velocity of one hundred and twenty miles an hour. Many people were killed by flying timbers, about this time, while endeavoring to escape to town.

"'The water rose at a steady rate from 3 P. M., until about 7:30 P. M., when there was a sudden rise of four feet in as many seconds. (Hundreds of people, undoubtedly, were killed and drowned during those four seconds.) I was standing at my front door, which was partly open, watching the water, which was flowing with great rapidity from east to west. The water at this time was about eight inches deep in my residence, and the sudden rise of four feet brought it to my neck before I could change my position. The tide rose in the next hour nearly five feet additional, making a total tide in that locality of about twenty feet.

"'By 8 P. M. a number of houses had drifted up and lodged to the east and south-east of my residence, and these, with the force of the waves, acted as a battering ram against which it was impossible for any building to stand for any length of time. At 8:30 P. M. my residence went down, with about fifty persons who had sought it for safety, and all but eighteen were hurled into eternity. Among the lost was my wife, who never rose above the water after the wreck of the building.

"'I was nearly drowned and became unconscious, but recovered through being crushed by the timbers and found myself clinging to my youngest child, who had gone down with myself and my wife. Mr. J. L. Cline joined me five minutes later with my other two children, and together with a woman and child whom we had picked up from the raging waters, we drifted for three hours, landing three hundred yards from where we started.

There were two hours that we did not see a house or any person, and from the swell we inferred that we were drifting to sea, which, in view of the north-east wind that then was blowing, was more than probable.

During the last hour that we were drifting, which was with south-east and south winds, the wreckage on which we were floating knocked several residences to pieces. When we landed about 11:30 P. M. by climbing over floating debris, the water had fallen four feet. It continued falling, and on the following morning the Gulf was nearly normal.

"'While we were drifting, we had to protect ourselves from flying timbers by holding planks between us and the wind, and with this protection we were frequently knocked great distances. Many persons were killed on top of the drifting debris by flying timbers, after they had successfully escaped from their wrecked homes. In order to keep on the top of the floating ma.s.ses of wrecked buildings, one had to be constantly on the look-out and continually climbing from drift to drift.

Hundreds of people had similar experiences.'

"Fearful as was the disaster," the Forecaster continued, "it would have been incalculably worse had it not been for the Weather Bureau warnings.

Hundreds of people were saved by retiring to the upper portion of the town during the afternoon of the hurricane and no amount of foreknowledge could have told the sudden four-foot rise in the Gulf.

Galveston learned her lesson, too, as was shown in the recent hurricane."

"I don't understand those hurricanes a bit," declared Fred, "they don't seem to act like tornadoes, and instead of coming from the west, like all the rest of our weather, they come up from the south-east. How is that, Mr. Levin?"

"The West Indian Hurricanes," the Forecaster replied, "are storms which are also called tropical 'cyclones' and which in the China Sea are known as 'typhoons,' and the fearful stories that one has read of the typhoon in the China seas applies equally to the hurricanes that strike our Gulf coasts.

"Like all other tropical cyclones, the West Indian Hurricanes are formed by an upward rising current of air over a moist heated area. There are five cradles of such storms. One is over the Pacific ocean south-east of Asia and gives the coast of China, the Philippine Islands and j.a.pan the typhoon. A second and a third are in the north and the south parts of the Indian Ocean. A fourth, which is less frequent, is found east of Australia.

"The cradle of the West Indian Hurricanes is in the North Atlantic, about six to eight degrees north of the equator and from two hundred to a thousand miles east of the West Indies. These hurricanes, when first seen, are quite small but they increase in size and in motion as they come westward. Most of them, when they reach the Lesser Antilles--where Uncle Sam's new islands lie, the Virgin Islands--also increase in whirlwind character, and turn northwestward, skirting the northern edge of Porto Rico. This is the mean track. About seventy-five per cent of them pa.s.s over a regular storm trail between Bermuda and Charleston, most of these coming close to the coast and sweeping circularly away from the land at Cape Hatteras. At the lat.i.tude of New York, the curve has taken them half way round the circle and they disappear as violent westerly gales, though beginning as easterly hurricanes.

"As you will have noticed, nearly all these storms come in the autumn.

That is because the cradle of the hurricane is the doldrums, and in August and September, the Atlantic doldrums are at their furthest north.

The Chinese typhoons are most frequent in the same months of the year, from the same cause."

"And this last one, sir," Tom asked, "the one that blew down my anemometer last week and which smashed up the old windmill, was it just like the hurricane of 1900?"

"I think I'll let my nephew tell you about that," was the reply; "he was in the thick of it, and the people of Galveston gave him a medal for bravery in connection with it, so he ought to be the one to speak."

"Gee, did you get a medal!" exclaimed Fred. "Do let's have a look at it."

The young weather observer shook his head.

"I haven't got it with me," he said, a little embarra.s.sed. "But if you chaps want to hear about the Hurricane, I guess, perhaps, I can do that." He smiled. "I don't know that I've anything quite as thrilling as Dr. Cline's drift to sea, but one really astonishing thing did happen.

I'll tell you about it."

"Tell us the whole thing," said Anton, "how the storm started and when you first got hold of it and what you did, and why they gave you the medals and--oh, everything!"

"All right," the young observer answered, and nursing his broken arm with his other hand, he began:

"We first heard about the hurricane on the morning of August 10th, where it had been seen between the islands of Barbados and Dominica. A little before ten o'clock that morning, storm warnings were sent to all West Indian stations. It came as a good deal of a surprise to us at Galveston because there had been none of the signs which usually go before a bad tropical disturbance. At two o'clock in the afternoon of that day, notice of the approach of a storm was sent to all Atlantic and Gulf stations of the Weather Bureau and the report was sent out by the wireless naval station at Arlington, Virginia.

"On the morning of the eleventh, the storm was south of the island of St. Croix, with a hurricane strength wind of sixty miles an hour at Porto Rico. On the twelfth, it was central off Haiti, and by the next morning was ravaging Jamaica. Hurricane warnings were sent out by the Bureau for Key West and Miami. On the fourteenth, the hurricane was central off the Isle of Pines, Cuba, and on the fifteenth, was central in the Gulf, gathering force steadily. All vessels were urged to remain in port. As a result of this warning, shipping scheduled to sail and valued at forty-five million dollars remained in harbor until after the hurricane had pa.s.sed. Had they sailed, few of these ships would have lived. Hurricane warnings were ordered as far west as Brownsville, Texas. On Monday, August 16th, the storm approached the coast, and, in our office in Galveston, its menace began to make itself felt.

"Over the gla.s.sy surface of the Gulf there came a long, low swell, smooth and deep, the waves several minutes apart. Those who saw the swell remembered the disaster of fifteen years before, when eleven thousand lives were lost. True, the great sea-wall had since been built to protect the town, but would it stand? Man against the hurricane--which would win?

"In the sky, which was a weak, watery blue, appeared the ice-plumes of the cirro-stratus clouds, the true mares'-tails, flung out across the vault, their ends stretching to the centre of the storm. At the horizon, a wicked, dull glare gave threat of the typhoon's approach. All as yet was soundless, only the far-flung clouds told of the fury which was hurling them ahead of the circling hurricane below.

"Then! A low, whirring whistle of the wind. Not like the moan of an approaching tornado is this wind, but like the high-pitched note of an engine running smoothly at high speed. Characteristic and peculiar, boys, is that heralding wind, with a throbbing note in its character.