The 1939 Atlantic hurricane season officially began on June 16, 1939, and lasted until October 31, 1939. These dates mark the period of each year when most tropical cyclones form in the Atlantic basin. The 1939 season had below normal activity, with only five tropical storms, of which two became hurricanes and one became a major hurricane, equivalent to Category 3 status or higher on the modern-day Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. The first tropical cyclone formed on June 12, and the last dissipated on November 6.
All of the storms affected land to some extent. The first three cyclones of the season made landfall along the coast of the United States, collectively causing only minor damage. Hurricane Four, the strongest of the year, took a northeastern path through the western Atlantic, striking Bermuda on October 16. The fifth and final storm was a minimal hurricane that wrought damage throughout the western Caribbean Sea, most notably in Jamaica and Cuba. The weakest known storm was Tropical Storm Three, with winds of only 45 mph (70 km/h) and a minimum barometric pressure of 1003 mbar (hPa).
Read more about 1939 Atlantic Hurricane Season: Timeline
Famous quotes containing the words atlantic, hurricane and/or season:
“Boys hide in lunging cubes
Crouching to explode,
Beyond the Atlantic skies,
With cheerful cries
Their barking tubes
Upon the German toad.”
—Allen Tate (1899–1979)
“Staid middle age loves the hurricane passions of opera.”
—Mason Cooley (b. 1927)
“Much poetry seems to be aware of its situation in time and of its relation to the metronome, the clock, and the calendar. ... The season or month is there to be felt; the day is there to be seized. Poems beginning “When” are much more numerous than those beginning “Where” of “If.” As the meter is running, the recurrent message tapped out by the passing of measured time is mortality.”
—William Harmon (b. 1938)