5. The New England Hurricane of 1938
The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 made landfall on Long Island on September 21, crossed the island, and smashed into New England. Despite its name, it also caused severe damage from heavy rains in New Jersey and Delaware, altered the coastline of Long Island, and changed the curricula at Harvard University, by destroying the school’s managed forests. Their rival, Yale, also had one of its managed forests obliterated by the storm, but the Eli’s had the foresight to have a second location further inland, and were able to continue the school’s forestry program comparatively unchanged. Thirty-five to forty per cent of the forests in New England were damaged or destroyed by the storm.
Over 4,500 farms and houses were totally destroyed across New England, more than 25,000 were damaged, railroad operations were disrupted for months, and the electrical power and telephone grids were crippled when more than 20,000 poles which carried their lines were knocked down. An estimate 700 people were killed by the storm, most of them in Rhode Island, which suffered the highest winds and storm surge. Rescue trails in the New England woods, and those created by loggers to remove the downed trees as quickly as possible to eliminate the fire hazard they presented were still visible twenty years later, and some still exist today, used as nature trails.