In Puerto Rico, a hurricane may be given the name of the saint whose
feast is celebrated on the day on which it strikes the island. The most
famous are: Santa Ana, July 26, 1825; Los Angeles, August 2, 1837; Santa
Elena, August 18, 1851; San Narcisco, October 29, 1867; San Felipe,
September 13, 1876; San Ciriaco, August 8, 1899; and the second San
Felipe, September 13, 1928.
Doubtless the worst hurricane during the twentieth century was the one
in 1928, “San Felipe.” It caused damage estimated at fifty million
dollars in Puerto Rico, and later struck Florida, causing losses
estimated at twenty-five million dollars. Puerto Rico lost three hundred
lives, Florida nearly two thousand.
One of the well-known storms of the West Indies was the “Padre Ruiz
Hurricane,” which was named after a priest whose funeral services were
being held in the church at Santa Barbara, Santo Domingo, on September
23, 1837, when the hurricane struck the island, causing an appalling
loss of life and property destruction.
Before the end of the nineteenth century, a weatherman in Australia
named Clement Wragge had begun giving girls’ names to tropical storms.
Down in that part of the Southern Hemisphere, hurricanes are called
willy-willies. They come from the tropics on a southwest course and turn
to the south and southeast on approaching or passing Australia. Their
winds spiral inward around the center in a clockwise direction—the
opposite of the turning motion of our hurricanes.
Wragge was the government meteorologist in Queensland, and later ran a
weather bureau of his own in Brisbane. A tall, thin, bewhiskered man who
stammered, he was known all over Australia as a lecturer on weather and
similar subjects. Australians of that time said that, as likely as not,
when due to talk about big winds, he would arrive at the lecture hall
with “too many sheets out” and fail to keep on his feet during the
lecture. Though his name was Clement, he was better known in Australia
as “Inclement.”
Storms which did not come from the tropics were called by men’s names.
Generally, Wragge called them after politicians who had earned his
disfavor, but for some reason he used girls’ names for the
willy-willies. As an illustration for his weather journal called
“WRAGGE,” he had a weather map for February 2, 1898, with a willy-willy
named “Eline.” He predicted nasty weather from a disturbance named
“Hackenbush.”
E. B. Buxton, a meteorologist for Pan American Airways, went to the
South Pacific in the late thirties and, after hearing about Wragge and
his names for willy-willies, adopted the idea for his charts. He
recalled particularly using the name “Chloe” for hurricanes.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account