This oceanfront home on Holway St., Chatham, just north of the lighthouse, is in great danger of joining the dozen other homes in that neighborhood which have slipped into the sea in the last few years. This photo was taken in March, 1996.
Cape Cod Hurricanes
Hurricane Bob was our last severe storm. It hit Cape Cod on August 18, 1991.It was a "B" hurricane, the second of that season. In 1996, we got the "B", Bertha, over a month earlier. By any logic that means you should be reading this page by candlelight in a storm shelter. We hope not, but Cape Codders are more than a bit familiar with 'canes, and many natives actually enjoy them. During "Bob", the women in our family went to a party on a houseboat moored in Ryders Cove, Chatham. During the "eye" of that storm, they joined a boatfull of revelers in an excursion out of the harbor to the open water. The men stayed ashore and wrapped bandages.
The first settlers to these parts reported hurricanes from the very beginning, and many sailing ships were lost to these vicious storms. The last really devastating 'cane hit the Cape during Labor Day weekend in 1938. Its damage was mostly due to the fact there was no warning. That storm had brushed Florida days earlier and then gone out to sea and been forgotten. Beach strollers on Long Island first knew of its return when they saw a 50-foot high tidal wave heading towards the shore. The wave almost swept across that island. The winds were so strong that barns in Vermont a hundred miles inland were white with the salt spray. The storm continued northeast and ripped across Buzzards Bay flooding downtown Providence and New Bedford wreaking havoc in the Falmouth and Bourne areas. This landfall broke the storm's back, and the rest of Cape Cod was spared severe damage.
There is an old Cape Cod doggerel about hurricanes which
suggests:
"June, too soon.
July, stand by.
August, if you
must.
September, REMEMBER!
October, all over."
-By Walter Brooks
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