AMERICA'S FIRST NATURAL DISASTER-THE HURRICANE OF 1635: IMPLICATIONS FOR HURRICANE DAMAGE IN NEW ENGLAND IN THE 21ST CENTURY

Few people know that America's first natural disaster was a hurricane, and that its target was New England. That storm provided early English settlers with their first experience with tropical weather hazards. What was the nature and effects of this event? This research study utilized data from three colonial settlements, along with inferences from recent hurricanes, to determine the anatomy and damage envelope of this major storm.

Contemporary reports indicate that the storm traveled on a NE path that passed between the Plimouth and Massachusetts Bay Colonies. Reports of damage intensity and flooding suggest the storm was a high Category 3 event on the Saffir-Simpson Scale, and that all of southeastern New England was affected.

Loss of life seems to have been restricted to surge and flooding of native American coastal villages and financial loss was minimal. However, this storm is extremely important in determining how a future major hurricane would affect Eastern New England. Major hurricanes in 1815, 1821, 1893 and 1938 severely damaged Western and Central New England but caused only minimal damage in the Eastern part. The 1635 Hurricane affected an extremely sparsely settled area with virgin forests. This area has now developed into the Providence-Boston Metropolitan Region with a population in the millions and exposed structures in the tens of billions. Scenarios are presented to suggest the degree of damage that would result if a storm of similar intensity were to follow this, and other tracks in the future.

Research by this author has revised the recurrence interval for the landfall of a hurricane in the Northeast from 125-150 years to 90-100 years. The last major hurricane in the Northeast was in 1938, and this region will soon be statistically overdue for the landfall of a powerful storm. This study makes it possible to develop damage scenarios for the region, based on a storm reconstruction superimposed on the present-day infrastructure and population density. This new information will be valuable in planning for damage mitigation when the inevitable "Big One" hits the Northeast some time in the 21st Century.