General comments:
It should be noted that the new proposed storm for August 1909 is *not* mentioned in the Monthly Weather Review, in contrast to these other systems.
[This is correct and now is clarified in the metadata writeup.]
[Done.]
[Note from Chris Landsea: The replies for these two systems are directly from Mike Chenoweth.]
[That is fine by me. Please omit or edit as you feel needed.]
[The reason is the totality of the information and not a single item. The Wilmington Journal indicates that in the lower part of the county (south of the city in the "lower part of the county" the storm was considered more violent than in Wilmington. As late as 4pm 12th the Columbia steamer (see "E" reply below) had hurricane force winds having apparently been in the eye of the storm around 5-8am that day. With the hurricane center that near to land, and the last wind being from the south, then it seems very likely that the hurricane made landfall not too far to the east of Wilmington but just enough to spare it from major damage. It is also possible that cooler waters near the coast may have played a role and diminished its intensity at landfall. I am certainly willing for the committee to make adjustments in light of the answers to the questions here, especially to intensity; I don't think the track needs to be adjusted much from what I have provided.]
[The ship is Spanish and it was normal for the ship's longitude to be given from a Spanish prime meridian (such as Cadiz) so this was meant to indicate uncertainty in the longitude since it is not clear if the longitude is as given or silently corrected to the Greenwich meridian in the report. As stated, it appears to be on the order of about 5 degrees too far east to fit with the available data. I have also recently obtained a new account from a ship's logbook further supporting the formation of the storm around 5-6 September further to the west, although I would now center its start point a little further to the nw than in the original write-up and the storm drifting initially to the e and ene more slowly, intensifying to a powerful tropical storm and then turning on its nw'erly track as in the write-up. The Emilia's longitude is an outlier and not to be relied on.]
[I agree. If the center passed just east of Wilmington as I assume, then the area of strongest winds on the western side of the storm may have been fairly narrow. The storm may also have weakened just prior to landfall which could also account for the data I have provided. (see "E" below).]
[Yes, the last four entries are indeed for 12 September and were inadvertently left as 11 September in the original.]
[Ships sailing in from further east around the time we would expect the storm to be passing through made no comments on the weather so the storm likely weakened considerably eastward of the last reports of hurricane force winds.]
[The easiest way to reconcile the apparent dating conundrum is a fast-moving storm that was inter-acting with the westerlies and accelerating the entire time as I indicate in my original write-up. My timeline would indicate that the Kensington probably encountered the storm around 11pm local time on 28 October which is consistent with an early afternoon landfall at Tampa Bay and an accelerating forward motion. This implies that the ship's encountering the storm in the GMEX had it in the early hours of 28 October. Also, given the differences in civil versus marine calendar usage (midnight to midnight versus noon to noon) there is always a potential for a 12-hour error if a single day is given in a ship report. The Kensington date in the press account of 28 October would be more accurate if it said 28-29 October or just 29 October since the seaman's day began at local noon of the 28th and ended local noon of the 29th and during this interval it encountered the hurricane. Reading it as a mariner's log date (28 Oct = 27-28 Oct) than the account is misdated; if one views it as a civil day (28 Oct) then the press account is spot on, just, by an hour or so.
My confidence in my track and its timing, while necessarily approximate given the available data, is supported by data from logbooks gathered after I originally submitted my item. The USS Tennessee sailed from Vera Cruz and reached New Orleans on 26 October. The USS Savannah was at Vera Cruz the entire time. The weather reports from the ships are consistent with my depiction of the overall synoptic situation and the timeline with the leading edge of the cold air reaching Vera Cruz about 6am 23 October and by 25 October pressure again falling and the weather becoming disturbed with a storm forming to the northeast somewhere in the Bay of Campeche but Vera Cruz never had pressure below 30.05 (uncorrected) and temperatures only fell briefly by a few degrees the night of 23-24 October so the center positions are, of course, quite approximate until we get a better fix with the earliest storm encounter by a ship in 22°N.]
For the intensity, there is concern that the 95 kt intensity in Florida is too high given 1) the lack of good pressure observations, and 2) the possibility that the cyclone was interacting with the westerlies or beginning extratropical transition even before reaching Florida. Does the thermal data available allow for a better analysis of the latter possibility?
[Yes, a better analysis is possible and I wish I had placed the temperatures in the original submission. The temperature at Egmont Key at all three observations on 27 October was 74F with unsettled rainy weather prevailing all day. On 28 October there is a single temperature reading at 7am of 68.5°F which would indeed indicate cooler air close to the hurricane. So I certainly am open to a different intensity value at this time and the exact evolution and timing of the extra-tropical transition can be modified in light of this.
The temperatures at Charlotte Harbour on 27 October at the 3 ob times were 78-78-79 and on 28 October were 77-78-74.
I ask the committee to consider that (1) Egmont Key did not sample the strongest part of the storm (2) the thermometer, being 1859, was in a non-standard exposure and was probably wetted and acting like a wet bulb under the weather conditions prevailing at the time (3) the additive effect of the increasing forward motion of the storm (4) pressure from the Kensington suggests the storm was still a hurricane at this point but soon after becoming extratropical (so even having travelled over land it maintained hurricane intensity in an increasingly unfavorable environment). I am willing to reduce the 90-95kt obs down to 85kt to keep it in Cat 2 territory given the absence of land-based damage reports but the timing and position are to remain.]
[Note here from Chris Landsea: The precision in HURDAT pre-1886 is 10 kt, so choices for landfall intensity in this 1859 hurricane are either 80 kt (Cat 1) or 90 kt (Cat 2).]
[Here is the full item from the 12 Nov Picayune about the W.W.
Harkness:
"On the 23d October, two days out from Tampico, was compelled to heave to
and reef sails in a heavy norther in lat 25°, long. 96°, which lasted
until the 27th, when in lat. 22°, long. 92.46°, was overtaken by a
hurricane. Began to blow at 8 P.M. from the northeast, and lasted till 11 A.M.
the next morning, when wind veered round to the northwest, barometer 27.50°
. During all this time the Harkness was hove to with all sails furled, except
a little of the main peak set to keep her head to the sea, which run very
high. Lost two jibs, carried away head stays and worked loose bowsprit.
Vesel made water freely after the gale. Finally, obliged to drift without
any sails till temporary rigging could be made. Wind blowing strong from
N.E. all the time. November 2. - At 4P.M. exchanged signals with the schooner
Star, bound south, lat. 25.24° long. 93.11°. November 4. -
Vessel very crank. Fruits rotten. Was obliged to run in for the land, westward,
in smooth water and brought to. All the fruit overboard. Broke cargo aft and
stowed forward, so as to bring vessel into sailing trim. November 9. - Off
Timablier [sic] Island. Exchange signals with steamships Mexico and Texas.
November 10. - Arrived at Southwest Pass, 21 days from Tampico, during which
time not one single hour of fair wind. Nothing but a northeaster from one end
of the Gulf to the other."
I considered the pressure reading unreliable only because I did not have a reading from which it initially fell to judge how well it was calibrated. If the coordinates are for noon the 27th, then this is indeed the sea day 26-27 October, instead of the 27-28th as implied by reading the entry as the storm beginning at 8pm the 27th and ending 11am the 28th, which is why I considered the account "misdated". Such a date was also inconsistent with a storm increasing its forward motion the further east it moved across the Gulf.
The USS Tennessee, in about 21.00-21.30°N 94°W had SSW winds at 1pm 22 October and then a shift, after a calm at 3pm, to north at 4pm 22 October indicating the arrival of colder air behind a cold front. Since the Harkness first had a norther in 25°N it had to have encountered the cold front earlier. There account says the 23rd, which is not correct when read as a civil time, and has to be the 22nd, and probably that for 21-22 October (sea reckoning). From the stated coordinates, the ship was forced back to the southeast by the norther, and then took the hurricane. So, if the 23rd is a mis-date by one day, then so is the 27th a misdate by one day. I made this supposition originally without the USS Tennessee logbook and so I am vindicated by the results. So, my analysis was gutsy in the first place and proved to be a reasonable approximation of what really happened.
The only hand-waving in this account was done by Fernandez-Partagas, who ignored a completely valid ship report ("Wildfire") which he thought was inconsistent with other information. He also ignored the account of the ship Portland, which sailed from Liverpool to New Orleans and had the hurricane on 28 October, which he acknowledges would match with the Wildfire report if the storm was in the GMEX and not in the Atlantic, as he mistakenly assumed. In this instance of "hand-waving", the (then) HURDAT committee agreed with his write-up and placed it directly into HURDAT. I've never understood this storm being in HURDAT as it was, given the climatology of late October hurricanes and the utter absence of weather reports from the Bahamas and Cuba earlier in the life cycle; the absence of such reports from these areas would increase the likelihood of cyclogenesis and a track from somewhere in the GMEX. Now, we have a much better idea of what actually happened.]
[Yes, the Brown et al. wind-pressure relationships are applied uniformly whenever a pressure is available, either at landfall or over the open ocean. We agree that using a revised wind-pressure relationship each time a new one is published would not be a reasonable approach. This would cause our team to go back to 1851 and re-revise the database every time, which is a huge amount of effort. The current plan is to continue with reanalysis efforts with the Brown et al. relationships from 1931 until the modern era. Certainly, researchers in the future would not be restricted in using any such revised wind-pressure relationships. (An aside about the Knaff-Courtney-Zehr wind-pressure relationship for use in reanalyses: the format of this relationship is not applicable for the historic storms because the relationship needs either the mean tangential winds in an annulus from 400-600 km from the center or the mean radius of gale-force winds. Both of these quantities are nearly impossible to estimate reliably before the modern era of aircraft reconnaissance since 1990.)]
[There are no reports available of such a very long eye passage. While it is possible that Mobile did not go through the exact center of the eye, it is agreed that the RMW was likely substantially smaller than originally estimated by Ho et al. Using a This value is substantially smaller than climatology (20 nmi - Vickery et al. 2000) for this latitude and central pressure. Thus keeping the landfall intensity at 100 kt and thus the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Windscale Category at 3 are reasonable. No changes are thus made to HURDAT, but the estimated RMW is changed from 30 to 10 nm.]
[Agreed, the combination of a large RMW and a slow moving system would indicate a lower intensity of 75 kt for the 973 mb central pressure. These observation were already in the raw data file.]
[Agreed, the new Brown et al. (2006) pressure-wind relationship suggests winds of 84 kt from the north of 25N equation for steady state systems and 81 kt for weakening systems. Given the small size but near average translational velocity of 10 kt at landfall, 85 kt is chosen at landfall in Mississippi at 16Z on the 2nd. This retains the Category 2 assessed in the 2003 reanalysis. No changes are needed to HURDAT as 85 kt was already indicated at 18Z on the 2super ndnosupersub , just two hours after the second landfall.]
[Agreed. The system had a very small size (140 nmi radius of outer close isobar and ~10 nm RMW), the latter of which is substantially smaller than climatology (23 nm '96 Vickery et al. 2000) for this central pressure and latitude. Given the lack of inner core observations before the 979 mb central pressure measurement, it is uncertain which relationship is most appropriate, so both are considered. Given the combination of a very small size with the assumption of an intensifying cyclone tempered somewhat by a slow translational velocity (5 kt), an intensity at landfall of 85 kt is analyzed. This is unchanged and thus retains the Category 2 from the 2003 reanalysis.]
[Agreed.]
[Reply provided by Mike Chenoweth.]
[Here are land-based reports for some stations on the US East coast for 29-31 October 1866. Since EDADS is not likely to come back up soon it is much more difficult to quickly obtain data to fully answer as I would normally. Obs are 7/2/9 and standard Smithsonian Institution Wind Force terms are in use by the US stations. Pressure data are not corrected.Cary Mock provided the Georgetown data from the Alexander Glennie record. Other reports note the observation time.
St. Stephens, New Brunswick [HMS Cordelia Logbook]
Oct 30 noon 49 SE6 30.10 Midnight 47 SE8 29.83
Oct 31 noon 53 S1 29.88 2pm SW2 4pm 53 NW1 29.95
Halifax, Nova Scotia [HMS Duncan Logbook]
Oct 30 noon 47 SE4-5 30.50
New Bedford, MA
Oct 29 45-51-54 ESE2-SE-SE3 30.37-30.29-30.21
Oct 30 58-62-52 SE5-S4-NW1 29.81-29.53-29.64
Oct 31 42-54-40 W1-WxN2-NW1 29.81-29.87-30.06
Ft. Monroe, VA
Oct 29 60-65-61 E3-E3-NE6 30.45-30.25-29.75 High wind during the night rain
began 7:00p.m.
Oct 30 65-66-55 NE2-N1-N3 [Observations inadvertently omitted and not
available w/o EDADS]
Wilson, NC [3541N 7747W]
Oct 29 58-70-69 E1-S2-E2
Oct 30 64-72-54 SW1-NW1-W1
Georgetown, SC
Oct 28 No temp NE1-E2-E1 clear-fine-cloudy
Oct 29 No temp SE5-SE5-S2 rain-rain-rain 2.5" of rain
Oct 30 MM-69-56 SW1-W3-W1 fine-clear-clear
Hilton Head, SC
Oct 29 68-76-66 E2-E3-W2
Oct 30 62-68-56 N1-N4-MM
Bermuda (noon ob)
Oct 29 74 NE3 30.040 fine wx
Oct 30 73 SE4 29.945 cloudy
The wind shift at Georgtown, SC is not consistent with a tropical cyclone passing by to its east; likewise, the wind field from the Virginia and NC observations would suggest a frontal boundary by the morning of 30 October lying between Norfolk and Wilson. A large high pressure area retreated as the low came up the coast but it seems like the initial disturbance came across the SE US and deepened/formed off the SC coast and then moved NNE into southern New England where it was clearly an extratropical system as F-P & Diaz suggested. Ludlum's sparse documentation also suggests he had doubts about the storm's existence. I do not believe we have sufficient evidence for a tropical cyclone especially given the absence of any storm in lower latitudes.'a0 Also, ship reports from the brigs G.W. Barter and Eveline do not mention rainfall or storms or any bad weather other than gales and if they had so, this would have made me more inclined to consider the possibility of a subtropical depression or storm forming north of the Bahamas and east of SC. The ships also do not mention having "laid to" so they continued moving (at whatever speed) so their coordinates may be the location where they initially encountered gales but the weather does not necessarily correspond to a fixed point and covers an indeterminate period of time on the stated day.]
[Note that the following response is directly from Mike Chenoweth.]
[Comment A - Observations for individual stations are available on EDADS (the successor to WSSRD) but the site is presently down according to an e-mail from Cynthia Karl to users and is expected to be down for some weeks until they fix the issues with the site. So at present I only have certain extracts from the original forms (mainly winds, temps and wx comments, and if available, pressure data). Ob times 7,2,9. MM=missing data for a given weather element; note that force 5 in Smithsonian Scale equals 35mph; force 6 = 45mph and force 7 = 60mph. Also, make reference to the NOAA Central Library website of daily weather maps produced by the Signal Corps at h http://docs.lib.noaa.gov/rescue/dwm/data_rescue_daily_weather_maps.html which indicates the sparse nature of the network in the southern Plains which I supplemented originally with reports from interior stations. If there had been any evidence of a remnant low passing by I would have said so and provided the most important details; instead there is nothing but negative data to infer from these observations for the northward movement of the tropical cyclone and everything in the observations nearer to the storm to keep it in Texas, looping as the data would suggest.
3 June
Austin TX N1-NE3-NE2
Victoria TX N1-N2-N1 79-90-83
Houston TX calm-NW3-NW3 80-89-79
Clear Lake NE2-NE3-NE3 77-83-77 [located in 29.32°N 95.01°W]
Collins Landing LA N2-E5-E3 29.73-29.68-29.71 (uncorrected and appear to be
on the order of .15-.20" too low with reference to New Orleans corrected
data) [located in 30.30°N 90.20°W]
Note: The 735am Washington time weather report from Galveston on 3 June indicates 12mph winds from the north, temperature 75° and barometer (corrected) at 29.92 [NOAA Central Library daily weather maps]
4 June
Austin NE - N4 - N3 77-90-78
Victoria N2-N3-N2 showers from 11am to 4pm 0.5" 80-86-80
Houston NW5-NE5-NE5 79-79-MM
Clear Lake NE3-NE4-SE5 79-76-77 at 1215 a,m. rain with few intermissions
until 5p.m.; wind [then] to ESE drizzling slightly increasing wind at
7p.m. and continuing to 9p.m.
Collins Landing SE3-S3-calm 29.71-29.71-29.74
Note: The 735am Washington time weather report from Galveston on 4 June indicates se31mph winds, temperature 76 and barometer (corrected) at 29.52 [NOAA Central Library daily weather maps]
5 June
Austin N3-N3-N2 77-85-77
Victoria N3-N3-N3 rain began 11am 78-80-78
Houston E5-NE5-NE5 78-80-78
Clear Lake SE5-SE4-E3 strong gale from NW from about 1230am to about 5am
doing much damage to the china tree in he yard; rain without much
intermission all day; no lightning
Collins Landing S1-W1-Calm 29.74-29.73-29.74
6 June
Austin N3-N2-N1 76-90-79
Victoria N3-N2-N1 rain ended 4pm 1.3" 78-83-78 rain nearly all day with
strong gusts of wind
Houston Calm-Calm-Calm 80-84-81
Clear Lake NE2-NE1-NE1 78-79-77 slight rain last night; showers at 130pm
with slight thunder
Collins Landing S2-S1-Calm 29.75-29.72-29.74
Note: The 735am Washington time weather report from Galveston on 6 June indicates a 4mph east wnd, temperature 79 and barometer (corrected) at 29.79.
7 June
Austin N3-N3-N1 79-90-78
Victoria N2-N2-N1 78-83-74 0.3" rain in showers; gusts of wind; fine rainbow
at sunset
Houston Calm-Calm-Calm 85-88-87
Clear Lake NE1-NE1-NE2 78-86-77 at 120pm and 315pm slight showers
Collims Landing Calm-W1-Calm 29.76-29.73-29.76
8 June
Austin N1-N3-E1 76-90-72
Victoria N1-N2-N1 78-80-76
Houston Calm-Calm-Calm 88-92-74
Clear Lake NE2-NE1-NE2 76-83-75 220pm heavy shower with thunder & lightning
then slight rain to 330pm
Collins Landing E2-NE2-Calm 29.82-29.82-29.82
9 June
Austin N1-NE3-NE2 79-87-77
Victoria N1-S1-S1 74-89-[8] 4
Houston MM-NE3-NE5 74-79-79
Clear Lake NE3-NE3-N5 75-72-72 began to rain at 1250pm without much
intermission in the afternoon; wind rose to a strong gale at 920pm and
continued without variation until 12pm then gradually slackened to a strong
wind by daybreak of the 10th; much damage to trees, fences and crops
Collins Landing 1-NE4-E4 29.83-29.79-29.81
10 June
Austin NW2-NW2-SW1 79-93-77
Victoria S1-S1-Calm 78-90-84
Houston MM-W5-MM 76-91-80
Clear Lake NW3-NW2-MM 74-88-70 [70F lowest temp of June 1871]
Collins Landing S6-SW7-SW6 29.73-29.76-29.78
Brookhaven MS E2-SE5-SW4 75-76-74 rain ended 5pm 3.00" rain]
[Comment B - The Galveston extracts in the Picayune of 9 June are taken from, and cited as being from, the Galveston [Daily] News of 6 and 7 June and the Galveston extracts from the 16 June Picayune are from the 11 June issue of the Galveston [Daily] News. Other reports are from the New Orleans papers interviews with passengers on ships from Galveston, or their own correspondent reports from Galveston. There are no Galveston papers for 1871 in the US Library of Congress but issues in later years of the 1870s that are available are frequently cited in the Picayune and match the content in the Galveston papers. Other local papers in the region would be welcome for any details that may not have been picked up in the New Orleans press but they will probably not make any fundamental change in the track and timing of the storm and should not delay changes in HURDAT since HURDAT is a living document that will always be ready for a new update.
Why is my use of Galveston press accounts from a New Orleans paper considered insufficient evidence for re-analysis? Fernandez-Partagas used only press accounts from New York City (New York Times) which is about 700 miles further from Galveston than New Orleans and previous HURDAT committee members apparently found that to be sufficient and accepted without question. A consistent policy towards sources and data is not apparent in your response to my input.]
[Comment C - The track in Louisiana is indeed a big miss by the Signal Corps and so it should be no surprise if they messed up the track of storm one as well. In real time, with little information on their own daily maps, they released to the press: "The threatening weather which is now prevalent on the [Great] lakes is the remnant of the storm which was at Galveston June 4th, and at Key West June 1st." [Dateline Washington, June 6 as reported in the Daily Picayune, 7 June, p. 1] There were no Galveston observations on the Daily Weather Map series for 5, 7-8 and 10-11 June.
In fact, they assumed that weather associated with a cold front and low pressure trough in the central Great Lakes and mid-Mississippi River valley on the morning of 6 June was associated with the tropical cyclone. It appears to me that the trough did not connect up with the low near the Texas coast and the low instead drifts ssw-ward for several days, as the gusty winds at Victoria on 6 & 7 June indicate. Also, northerly winds prevailing across SE TX each day from 3-9 June is completely at odds with the normal climatological expectation of south and south-southeast winds are expected.]
[Comment D - The critical time in the space/time continuity is in the early morning hours of 5 June when Clear Lake reports a strong gale from NW, which followed force 5 SE winds at 9pm 4 June and then were followed at 7am 5 June by winds back at SE5 at 7am 5 June. This would indicate that the center of the storm moved to the east of Clear Lake and then back to the south and west towards sunrise of the 5th probably passing between Houston and Clear Lake. If not for the excellent note-taking by the Clear Lake observer we would not be able to infer from the fixed hour observations that the storm center had even reached this far north since the winds are predominantly NE at Houston and SE at Galveston on 3-5 June. The Houston press account mentions only NE winds and parts of the city submerged indicating a predominant easterly fetch to the winds driving the water into the bay and bayous.]
[On the days of peak intensity - 16th and 17th - the system had a rather minimal temperature gradient ~2 F. The two gale force reports were roughly 100 and 175 nm from the center at that time on the 16th. It appears that the system was primarily tropical in nature, but in the era of satellite imagery, might instead have been considered a subtropical storm.]
[The positions are adjusted toward the west on the 16th, 17th and 18th. No tropical storm force winds or low pressures occurred in North Carolina, which is consistent with the system dissipating late on the 18th.]
[Yes, pressures were examined as well. However, pressure observations in the COADS database tend to be quite sparse in the early 20th Century.]
[These two gales were about 250 and 200 nm, respectively, from the system's center. Another reason for doubting the observations - which appear to be from the same ship - is that on the 15th the ship is nearly collocated with a separate vessel that is reporting 15 kt SW winds. None of the ships were close enough to the center to estimate a central pressure from the data.]
[There was no pressure reading accompanying this wind observation from the ship.]
[The system on the 16th to the 18th is indeed an extension of a disturbance currently in the Additional Notes section of the metadata in 1909. Upon further review, this system is close, but does not meet the criteria needed for inclusion as a tropical storm in HURDAT. The 17th and 18th are added to the writeup in the Additional Notes.]
[Agreed that this system is quite unique in its inclusion into HURDAT during the post-1871 era based upon a single observation. However, main reason for requiring two independent observations of either gale force and/or 1005 mb or less was to insure that a single observation of minimal tropical storm intensity was not simply an instrumentation problem or due to a typographical error. In this case, it is highly unlikely that this system is not a tropical cyclone of at least tropical storm intensity because of either of these two issues.]
[These worthwhile suggestions are excellent ones to followup on in future reanalysis efforts.]
[Plots of the COADS and additional observations were included annotated to the Historical Weather Maps. Unfortunately, these were apparently lost in the transition from Colin McAdie to Jack Beven as chair of the committee. Plots have been reprinted of the Historical Weather Maps.]
[Agreed, these have been removed.]
[The peak intensity of 45 kt is based upon the observed "strong gale" - about 40 kt - from the steamship Karen, under the assumption that it is quite unlikely that the ship sampled the worst portion of the tropical storm and the intensity is adjusted just above the observed value. The combination of HWM and COADS data suggest that the system was primarily an elongated trough on the 20th and 21super stnosupersub , especially on the latter day when more observations were available. Thus beginning the system at 00Z on the 22super ndnosupersub is preferred. The 12Z position is adjusted westward slightly, but in deference to the two ships with gales that were likely near 87-88°W on that date, the position is moved to 90.5°W]
[The following additional information was provided by Ramon Perez, at the Cuban Institute of Meteorology:
"I couldn't find any information to confirm the sea level pressure recorded at western tip of Cuba. The annual reports of the "Observatorio del Colegio de Belen" didn't record any information on western Cuba sea level pressure. Gutierrez Lanz wrote: "Ciclòn de notable intensidad (we can understand as a major hurricane) pasò por el Sur de la Isla, alcanzando su lado derecho con fuerza moderada la regiòn Sur de la provincia oriental y 'bastante màs en Pinar del Rìo. En La Habana y provincias centrales se sintiò dèbilmente. Los daños causados fueron de consideraciòn en la provincia de Pinar del Rìo, principalmente en los frutos menores y en las casas de curar tabaco, en las otras provincias fueron muy ligeros. En este ciclòn se perdiò el vapor "Marouwinje", de la United Fruit Co., con 28 pasajeros y 65 tripulantes, el cual saliò de Belice el 13 de agosto y del que nada se volviò a saber."
Furthermore, it is clear to me that Gutierrez Lanza and his colleagues didn't see this hurricane as intense as the 1924 hurricane. They named the 1924 hurricane as the "Huracàn sin precedents" and comparing it with the 1846 hurricane (La Tormenta de San Francisco de Borja). However, damages related by MWR in western Cuba are very important. We can upgrade this 1915 hurricane to category 4 or more according to the analysis you could make about it."
Given the uncertain nature of this measurement (in that the Cuban meteorologists have no record of it) and that the value itself was quite rough ("27 inches"), it might be placing too much emphasis on this pressure to directly obtain an intensity. The Brown et al. south of 25N pressure-wind relationship would suggest 144 kt - Category 5 conditions and about 40 kt more than previously in HURDAT. The impacts that are described do suggest wind-caused damages above that of a Category 3. The reanalysis here splits the difference between the original HURDAT and the winds from the pressure-wind relationship because of the uncertainties present in the pressure value. Winds are adjusted upward to 125 kt from 12Z on the 14th to 06Z on the 15th , a major change from 105 kt originally. This revises the impact in Cuba to a Category 4 on the Saffir Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.]
24665 11/27/1925 M= 9 4 SNBR= 553 NOT NAMED XING=1 SSS=1 24670 11/27*202 859 30 0* 858 30 0*200 857 35 0*199 856 35 0* 24675 11/28*198 854 35 0*197 852 35 0*195 850 35 0*193 847 35 0* 24680 11/29*191 842 35 0*190 837 35 0*190 835 35 0*193 837 35 0* 24685 11/30*199 841 35 0*208 846 35 0*220 847 40 0*236 843 45 0* 24690 12/01*256 828 55 0E273 811 50 0E287 801 60 0E300 795 70 0* 24695 12/02E310 787 80 0E320 781 75 0E333 775 70 0E344 769 65 980* 24700 12/03E355 762 60 0E365 754 60 0E372 745 55 0E377 735 55 0* 24705 12/04E379 724 50 0E378 712 50 0E376 700 45 0E372 690 45 0* 24710 12/05E368 682 40 0E364 677 35 0E360 675 30 0* 0 0 0 0* 24715 TS[Agreed.]
The concerns raised about the intensity have been addressed in the previous re-analysis of this storm, resulting in higher winds than what Gladstein is proposing. Thus, the committee thinks that issue is closed for now. The positions have also been adjusted to those that are within 0.1-0.2 degrees of the Gladstein proposals except for 00Z and 06Z on 21 October. These would produce a somewhat discontinuous change in the best track speed from 21/06z to 21/12Z, so the committee thinks it would be best to keep the positions previously worked out.
[Agreed.]
[After further investigation, it was determined that there were indeed two separate systems about a week apart in time. The latter of which that impacted Sabine Pass was likely a 50 kt tropical storm. Alternatively, some of the researchers contributing information for this system have concluded that this was not a tropical storm either over the Gulf of Mexico or in Louisiana/Texas and instead was a local wind/rain event (likely a squall line) for Sabine Pass. ]
[The newspaper articles from the Lake Charles Echo are provided.]
[The observations from Galveston and the other available stations along with the modest impacts described in the newspaper articles for Lake Charles and Sabine Pass do suggest that a small tropical storm came ashore near the Louisiana/Texas border. But they are quite inconsistent with a hurricane strike. With these additional data, the track is adjusted over the Gulf of Mexico toward the southwest on the 14th beginning with as a tropical depression , intensifying to a 50 kt tropical storm by landfall, but making landfall at the same location and time as originally indicated. Weaker winds are also indicated during the dissipation phase.]