September is often the key month for hurricanes in the North Atlantic, and two September storms of this kind this century are particularly well remembered.
The first, an anonymous survivor from the days before hurricanes had names, is the Galveston Hurricane of September 8th, 1900. This storm 98 years ago tomorrow was the deadliest hurricane ever to hit landfall in the United States; it destroyed 3,600 houses in the Texan town, and killed 6,000 people, about a sixth of the entire population. It still stands as the worst natural disaster, in terms of loss of life, to strike the North American continent.
The second event was much more recent. On September 12th, 1988, Hurricane Gilbert swept over the island of Jamaica, and moved on to wreak havoc in the Gulf of Mexico, leaving 200 dead and 800,000 homeless. It was the unprecedented ferocity of Gilbert that caused such wide concern; it was by far the most powerful hurricane of the century, with winds of up to 200 m.p.h. on its periphery, and a central pressure that was an all-time low for the Atlantic. The fear was that Gilbert's unusual vigour might be a consequence of global warming, and for the first time the notion began to gain currency that such phenomena might be more frequent and more vicious in a "greenhouse world".
Here on this side of the Atlantic, September hurricanes have also left their mark. The storm of September 16th, 1961, recalled as Hurricane Debbie, was born in the balmy waters of the Caribbean some five or six days previously. As with all hurricanes, its intensity abated somewhat as it turned northwards over the colder waters of the North Atlantic, but by the time the storm reached Ireland it had acquired a new lease of life.
As Debbie passed close to the west coast of Ireland on its way northeastwards, it caused great damage in the western half of the country, bringing winds with gusts in excess of 100 miles per hour. At many places in Ireland, the record for the highest wind-speed was established on that day, and many of these gusts have never been exceeded.
And it was also in September that one of the greatest historical dramas to be affected by the weather took place around our shores. The September storms of 1588 wrecked about 25 home-bound ships of the Spanish Armada that had sailed so proudly against Elizabeth's England four months previously. It was probably the stormiest September of the 16th century, and it is not at all unlikely that some of the destructive gales that year had their origins in Caribbean hurricanes.