West Indian Hurricane Season of 1932

Abstract

THE West Indian hurricane season of the present year will rank as one of the notable ones, since two storms of the first magnitude have already been reported. The particulars of the more recent of these that have appeared in the Times of Sept. 28 indicate a phenomenon of an intensity very much above the average, the speed of the wind being said to have reached 120 miles an hour at times in Puerto Rico on Sept. 27, where at least two hundred people have been killed. The storm is said to have been even more destructive there even than that of Sept. 13, 1928, and to have been the worst in the island's history. An official figure for the maximum speed of the wind will unfortunately not be available owing to the fact that the anemometer on the roof of the Weather Bureau at San Juan was destroyed with the tower on which it was mounted. The particulars given of the track do not indicate anything very abnormal. Many September storms pass to the south of San Domingo, as did the recent storm; they generally move towards west-north-west. In this case, however, the centre passed near the Virgin Islands and was on Sept. 28 apparently moving directly towards Jamaica, which suggests a nearly due westward motion. Such tracks are more common in August than in September and have generally passed close to the north coast of Yucatan to Mexico, without having begun the ‘recurve’ to a north-eastward movement characteristic of northern tropical hurricanes, which carries so many West Indian storms into the Gulf States.