Using Historical Data to Inform a General-Audience-Level Narrative of the Great New England Hurricane of 1938

When telling the story of a historical weather event to a general audience, one might think that gathering historical accounts and descriptions, and then integrating and digesting that information for the public consumption, would be enough. However, many of the claims within such accounts can be substantiated or contradicted via informed and careful examination of a wealth of historical data available from various authoritative sources.

We will discuss ways in which we used data from sources such as the National Climatic Data Center, the U.S. Geological Survey, the U.S. Forest Service and several others to verify or discard information typically associated with the Great New England Hurricane of 1938 and to enrich and inform the stories told within a weather history book on the subject. The book Taken by Storm, 1938: A Social and Meteorological History of the Great New England Hurricane was published by the American Meteorological Society in September 2013 for the 75th anniversary of the storm.