January 74 86 61 85 2.01 11 February 74 88 60 82 .96 8 March 75 87 59 79 2.15 9 April 76 91 59 80 6.86 14 May 78 88 67 83 6.29 13 June 78 90 67 86 7.42 18 July 79 92 67 86 8.34 18 August 80 95 68 84 6.77 17 September 79 93 69 85 7.63 16 October 79 92 67 86 9.63 15 November 78 91 64 85 2.76 11 December 76 89 61 87 2.09 11 ------------------------------------------------------------------ Annual 77 95 59 84 62.91 161 Santo Domingo has at intervals felt the violence of the destructive hurricanes which occasionally ravage the West Indies. They often combine the features of a tornado and a cloudburst, and while the furious whirlwind wrecks houses, uproots trees and strips forests bare of leaves, the accompanying severe rains swell the streams to abnormal height and cause extensive inundations. The hurricane season is reckoned as beginning in July and ending in October and when during this period a sudden fall of the barometer announces the proximity of unusual atmospheric disturbances all shipping keeps to the harbors and the dwellers on shore take measures to guard against the devastating rage of the wind. The first West Indian hurricane of which we have any record was that of 1502 which destroyed the first city of Santo Domingo and sank a Spanish fleet. More recent storms felt in Santo Domingo were those of 1834, 1865, 1876 and 1883. That of September 6, 1883, desolated the southwestern provinces of the Republic, and the rise of the Ozama River swept away the bridge connecting the capital with the opposite shore. The hurricane of 1899 which laid waste the nearby island of Porto Rico was scarcely felt in Santo Domingo. The latest unusually heavy storm was that which swept over the Republic during the first week of November, 1909, and caused much damage, especially in the Cibao. A sudden storm in the afternoon of August 29, 1916, accompanied by a kind of tidal wave, surprised the American 14,500 ton armored cruiser "Memphis" at anchor in the roadstead of Santo Domingo City and wrecked it against the rocky shore.