Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson [54]
To Young, this was additional evidence: “I was then confident that a cyclone was approaching us and accounted for the high tide by assuming that the storm was moving toward the northwest or against the gulf stream, thus piling up the water in the gulf.”
The cyclone’s exact location was anyone’s guess. The Weather Bureau was no help. About all one could really tell from the bureau’s advisories was that a storm of some sort did exist. The bureau had not yet acknowledged that the storm was a tropical cyclone. But it had to be, Young believed.
“For my own satisfaction, and at the request of friends, I constructed a chart, outlining roughly the origin, development and probable course of the cyclone.”
He based his estimate of the storm’s track on what he had seen in the Tuesday-morning weather map and on subsequent maps and advisories from the Weather Bureau’s Central Office, copies of which came to the Cotton Exchange because of its obvious interest in weather. He placed the storm’s origin somewhere south of Cuba, but assumed it would behave like most tropical storms—that it would travel northwest for a time “as cyclones always do,” then curve toward the northeast for an exit into the Atlantic. He estimated the storm would strike the U.S. mainland somewhere near the mouth of the Mississippi.
“The error I made,” he wrote, “was in placing the course too far to the east.”
THAT EVENING, AT precisely 6:41 P.M. Galveston time, Joseph Cline took the necessary readings for the eight o’clock 75th meridian-time national observation.
Much of the day had been clear and hot, but now clouds filled the sky from horizon to horizon. Joseph rated the cloud cover at ten, the maximum. It was still hot, however. At 4:00 P.M. the temperature had been 90 degrees. Now, nearly three hours later, the thermometer still showed 90.
The barometer stood at 29.637, and rising. At midnight, when Joseph climbed to the Levy Building roof to take his last reading, he found the barometer had risen to 29.72.
CUBA
“Who Is Right?”
IN HAVANA, FRIDAY afternoon, William Stockman dried his fingers on a towel that he kept beside his desk. He wound another piece of paper into his typewriter. A fan dangled from the high ceiling. The air was like a moist sweater.
He typed a page number at the top. Seventeen.
It was the last page of his reply to Col. H. H. C. Dunwoody’s letter of Wednesday, September 5, in which Dunwoody had shown himself uncharacteristically perturbed by the Cubans and their rather pathetic cries of outrage over the bureau’s telegraph ban. Dunwoody had written, “I think it would also be well for you to give me a copy of the statement of the mistakes which Jover made last year, and to which at one time you called my attention.… I may need this in defending my position.”
Stockman believed he had more than fulfilled the colonel’s request. In these seventeen pages he had given Dunwoody example after example of forecasts in which the Cubans had made alarming declarations that later proved baseless. No one could accuse Stockman of manipulating the record. Stockman had typed the Cuban forecasts and the corresponding U.S. advisories verbatim, with dates and times, so Dunwoody and his critics could see for themselves.
Stockman typed his last paragraph, and his closing—“Very respectfully,”—and pulled the page from the typewriter.
His shirt cuffs were moist. He aligned the pages of his letter in a satisfying stack. Seventeen pages. Eighteen, once he attached a chart of rainfall and wind. He tapped the bottom of the stack against the green felt blotter on his desk. Dunwoody wanted a defense. This was a defense.
There was nothing like a nice thick letter to make a man feel he had put in a good day’s work. Out of prudence and pride, Stockman began rereading his own letter.
“Colonel:” it began.
Now, was that respectful enough? Should Stockman have written, “My dear Colonel,” or the more formal “Sir,” required in all correspondence with His Highness, Willis Moore?
No, he decided. “Colonel” was