Earthquakes and Hurricanes! Natural Disasters and the Civil War




Trees near Reelfoot Lake show effects of Great New Madrid Quake






And while the war reached a critical stage in 1863….


Another off-year for storm chasers in 1864:






4 thoughts on “Earthquakes and Hurricanes! Natural Disasters and the Civil War

  1. Nice post! And I had no idea that NOAA maintained such data.

    On the earthquake of Aug 31, 1861–I wonder if any of the soldiers engaged in the skirmishes around Mason’s Hill and Bailey’s Crossroads that day thought that the earthquake was nothing more than enemy artillery shaking the ground! (I assume that the earthquake, if similar to the one the other day, would have been experienced in the NOVA region.)

  2. Very interesting post. Albert Myer, the father of the Signal Corps, realized the value of using telegraphic reports from nationwide to form a near real-time picture of weather patterns in the years just before and after the Civil War. According to the NOAA website: “In 1848, Joseph Henry, Secretary of the new Smithsonian Institution, suggested a system of weather observers across the continent, who would use the newly operational telegraph to “forecast” storms. By 1860, 500 stations, manned by volunteers, furnished daily telegraphic weather reports.”

    In 1870, the task for national weather tracking was assigned to Myer’s Army Signal Corps. If this capability could have been harnessed a few years earlier, Union generals might have been able to have done a better job at factoring weather considerations (i.e. not making the Mud March) into their campaign planning. Alas, it really would not be until WWII that modern meteorological science played a key role in military planning.

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