Great Havana Hurricane of 1846 - Strength

Strength

The Great Havana Hurricane was likely a Category 5 hurricane; however, confirming its intensity would require the accuracy of modern instruments. The earliest officially recorded Category 5 hurricane, the 1924 Cuba hurricane did not occur for decades.

In Havana, Cuba, a pressure of 940 mbar (28 inHg) was recorded, but reports of wind speeds at the time are only estimates.

One estimate shows a pressure of 902 mbar (26.6 inHg) as the storm crossed the Florida Keys, which would make it the second-strongest U.S. hurricane landfall on record, behind only the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935, also in the Florida Keys. In addition, if the pressure estimate is accurate, the hurricane would be tied with Hurricane Katrina as the sixth-most-intense hurricane ever recorded in the Atlantic, and easily the most intense hurricane of the 19th century. No Atlantic storm would officially reach or surpass 902 mbar (26.6 inHg) until the Labor Day storm in 1935, nearly 90 years later.

Read more about this topic:  Great Havana Hurricane Of 1846

Famous quotes containing the word strength:

    The bugle-call to arms again sounded in my war-trained ear, the bayonets gleamed, the sabres clashed, and the Prussian helmets and the eagles of France stood face to face on the borders of the Rhine.... I remembered our own armies, my own war-stricken country and its dead, its widows and orphans, and it nerved me to action for which the physical strength had long ceased to exist, and on the borrowed force of love and memory, I strove with might and main.
    Clara Barton (1821–1912)

    I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antæus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows.
    Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)

    There is a sort of subjection which is the peculiar heritage of largeness and of love; and strength is often only another name for willing bondage to irremediable weakness.
    George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)