The 1939 California tropical storm, also called the 1939 Long Beach Tropical Storm, El Cordonazo, The Lash of St. Francis was a tropical cyclone that hit Southern California in September, 1939. Formerly a hurricane, it was the only tropical storm to make landfall in California in the twentieth century. The only other known tropical cyclone to directly affect California is the 1858 San Diego Hurricane, and only three other eastern Pacific tropical cyclones have caused gale-force winds in the continental United States. The tropical storm caused heavy flooding, leaving many dead, mostly at sea.
Read more about 1939 California Tropical Storm: Meteorological History, Impact
Famous quotes containing the words california, tropical and/or storm:
“We have advanced by leaps to the Pacific, and left many a lesser Oregon and California unexplored behind us.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Physical force has no value, where there is nothing else. Snow in snow-banks, fire in volcanoes and solfataras is cheap. The luxury of ice is in tropical countries, and midsummer days. The luxury of fire is, to have a little on our hearth; and of electricity, not the volleys of the charged cloud, but the manageable stream on the battery-wires. So of spirit, or energy; the rests or remains of it in the civil and moral man, are worth all the cannibals in the Pacific.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Hail, Columbia! happy land!
Hail, ye heroes! heaven-born band!
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
Who fought and bled in Freedom’s cause,
And when the storm of war was gone,
Enjoyed the peace your valor won.
Let independence be our boast,
Ever mindful what it cost;”
—Joseph Hopkinson (1770–1842)