Hello Dr. Aviles, thanks for taking the time to talk to us!

I am curious about what research you were able to conduct on hurricanes pre-dating the European settlement of the eastern seaboard? You mention your suspicion that the 1938 storm may be one of only a handful like it in a thousand year span, which obviously includes as much time before Europeans as after! I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and was fascinated by the intense detective work that allowed the precision-dating of major earthquakes in pre-settlement times through corroboration of geological records, Native American oral accounts, and written records of tsunamis in Japan, getting as specific as the hour of the day when a quake occurred. Do hurricanes leave any kind of physical geological scar that can be specifically attributed and dated hundreds of years later? Did Native American lore survive the settlement of the eastern seaboard with sufficient detail to be able to estimate hurricane information? What is the earliest specific hurricane you feel confidant can be gleaned from the records?

Thanks again! This kind of historical research is impressive, valuable, and just plain cool. I appreciate your efforts!

As I understand it the reason that the storm affected the Southern New England coast so badly was that it crossed Long Island much faster than most storms, so it didn't lose much intensity over land. What made it so fast moving, and what other storms (though maybe much less intense) has this happened with?

Also given that Long Island is little more than 20 miles South to North, why does that reduce storm intensity so much? It seems like many storms move considerably further inland before really diminishing.

Thank you so much for taking the time to be with us today!

This is an area far outside my expertise, but nonetheless fascinating, so I apologize if this is a silly/super easy question. Can you describe the early warning systems, if any, that were in place before this monster hit land? Did New England residents know something big was coming, or was the storm a complete surprise?

Thanks again for stopping by today!

Hi Dr Lourdes, thanks for doing this AMA!

My question is, were there any big changes for the United States Weather Bureau after the 1938 New England Hurricane?

Thank you so much for doing this AMA! As someone with a hobbyist's interests in meteorology, it's great to have an expert here to talk to. If I can ask a question that's somewhat outside the scope of the book, could you suggest any good resources for people who are interested in the science of meteorology, but are just beginning to learn? Also, are there any other major historical storms that you find particularly compelling or fascinating? Thanks so much!

A few decades earlier, Galveston was utterly destroyed due to a hurricane that no one seems to have expected to come their way, and it seems that much of the lack of preparedness was due to a real lack of understanding on how the storms operated. There were people who had novel ideas, which turned out to be correct, by they were mostly ignored. I can only assume that in the wake, there was a decided shift in thinking and study. Between Galveston and the 1938 New England Hurricane, what sort of changes were made in scientific understanding of hurricanes? Was the shift gradual, or was there major unheaval in the field during that period?

Could you describe a little more about the process you went to finding and reviewing the historical documents? Who did you contact? How did you verify its authenticity? Did you find anything interesting?

Hi Dr. Aviles,

What do you find is the most important take away from this storm? What can agencies like FEMA and the NWS, as well as various state agencies learn from this storm to be better prepared for when the next one hits? And what can we as residents who live along the shoreline learn from the impact this storm had?

Where did the post-disaster aid come from? Was it funded by the local governments?

Have trends and developments in environmental history influenced your work? If so, what are some of them?

For those interested, this is a media page that I put together as part of my promotion packet and it contains links to various interviews (video and audio) that cover many other aspects of the hurricane. Many of them happened during September 2013 for the 75th anniversary of the storm: media collection

Was 1938 an El Nino year? There were also catastrophic floods in Los Angeles that year.

Well, I am about ready to sign off and officially end the AMA. It was an absolute pleasure to answer all your excellent questions. I will come back once in a while and answer any other questions that might trickle in after this, so do not hesitate to ask some more if you feel so inspired. In the meantime, have a good evening, everyone!

I know this is a bit late, but I'm wondering if you can talk about the role of communications technologies and and evolving ideas of "disaster prepardness" in understanding the human impact of extreme, or at least irregular, weather events.

Did the storm greatly disrupt contemporary communications networks? My perception is that storms and flooding tends to have a large "inconvenience footprint" these days outside the area of immediate devastation, because households and businesses today are much more reliant on electricty and telecom networks for their day-to-day functioning than was the case back in the 1930s.

How true is this?

Hi Lourdes.

As an aspiring writer, I have a question about the writing process and experience. How did writing this book and editing it (and whatever else was involved) affect your work and personal life. It seems like a lot of work has to go into something like this, so I'm curious if anything else suffered as a result.

Thanks very much for being here! What a fascinating topic, too.

I apologize if this lies outside the scope of your work, but I'm curious about the international reaction to this storm and to others like it. Such storms seem to lie very much outside of European experience, for example, and I'm wondering about the reaction of other world powers to the devastation wrought upon the United States by this event during a period of such heightened international tensions.

Not a question, just more of a statement. My dad used to talk about this hurricane once in a while. He was 8 years old when it hit but it seemed to really leave its mark on him. Heck my mom used to talk about it as well, though she was only months old but would relate what her parents told her about it!

I can only imagine just how horrible this storm was!

Hi,

1938 hurricane was obviously the big one over the last century, but there's been several other damaging hurricanes in New England in that time as well. Carol, Bob, Irene, etc.

What I find interesting about hurricanes in New England is that people up here seem to not do anything to mitigate the risk. There are very few houses on stilts, bridges are still built in areas where a major flood will take them out.

For infrastructure and homes built prior to the '38 hurricane, I can understand not really paying attention to the risk. And I can even see not bothering to retrofit or rebuild around the risk. But for construction afterwards, I really don't see a legitimate excuse.

Am I being overly harsh here? Was there a major change to construction habits after the '38 storm? Maybe those habits died out again? Am I totally wrong (the damage in VT due to Irene says no...)?

Thanks!