November's Fury: The Deadly Great Lakes Hurricane of 1913

“You Might Not Have Light Tonight”

The blizzard hitting Cleveland paralyzed its transportation and communications systems, leaving the city isolated from the rest of the world. Despite the hardship, Cleveland’s newspapers continued to publish, and over the next few days printed front-page reports about the loss of life and vessels from the storm. 3 “you mIgHt Not Have lIgHt toNIgHt” The Storm Visits Cleveland Cleveland lay in white and mighty solitude, mute and deaf to the outside world, a city of lonesome snowiness, storm-swept from end to end. —Cleveland Plain Dealer A wintry mix of rain and snow began falling oncleveland at about four thirty on Sunday morning. The temperature was a seasonably cool thirty-six degrees, and a moderate wind blew out of the northeast . The barometer, as recorded by William h. alexander, cleveland ’s Weather Bureau reporter, was at 29.60 inches and falling. at first the precipitation was mostly rain, mixed with large, wet flakes of snow. The snow melted as soon as it hit the ground, if it lasted that long. Streets and sidewalks turned slick and shiny under the streetlights. The storm that had been plaguing the upper Great lakes had arrived in Ohio’s largest city, but to those awake to notice , it must have seemed more like an expected ending to the area’s unseasonably warm temperatures of the past week than the onset of anything fierce. The people of Ohio might have been forgiven if they had expected out-of-the-ordinary weather. The state’s weather had been anything but average in 1913. The above-normal spring temperatures had caused great hardship when, in late March, a catastrophic 104 “You mIGHT noT H AVe LIGHT TonIGHT” flood surged through a large portion of the state, particularly in those cities and towns in lower-lying areas or on floodplains. The flood had killed 462 people, destroyed 20,000 homes, and left an additional 35,500 homes uninhabitable. according to historian Trudy e. Bell, the flood, widely known as the Great Dayton Flood, stood as “the most widespread disaster the united States had ever suffered, dwarfing the areas destroyed by the chicago Fire of 1871, the Johnstown flood of 1889, or the San Francisco earthquake and fire of 1906.” Torrents of rain—eleven inches in some areas—had fallen during the week after easter, menacing levees and sending people scurrying to higherground.amassivewall of water,cresting at twenty feet, thundered down the Sandusky river. “at the flood’s peak between March 25 and 28,” Bell wrote, “some towns were inundated by water so deep that literally not a rooftop or chimney could be seen across water rushing through a river valley.” cleveland, although not as affected by the flooding as Dayton and other Ohio cities, recovered, but slowly. The temperatures remained well above average during the summer months, promising sweet profits for the commercial shipping companies located in cleveland. autumn had been similarly warm. until the time when rain began to fall on November 9, it was largely jacket or shirtsleeve weather at a time of year when people were accustomed to wearing much heavier clothing. By midmorning on Sunday, November 9, the rain had dissipated , and only a heavy, wet snow was falling. With the dropping temperatures, it was beginning to accumulate. This first snowfall of the season probablydelighted children and annoyed parents having to devote extra time to bundle them up for church services. Wind velocity increased. By 1:50 in the afternoon, alexander noted, winds had reached forty miles per hour. The blowing snow, initially gathering wherever itwas stopped by a building, tree, or some other obstruction, started to drift. The waters of lake erie reflected the turmoil on land. choppy waves developed when wind velocities increased. early Sunday morning, before daylight, the State of Ohio, a passenger liner, was ripped from her two-inch mooring lines and driven diagonally across the slip, dragging pleasure crafts tied up in the harbor along with her; she smashed the smaller vessels to tinder on the opposite side of the pier. a tugboat, the Kitty Downs, was also heavily “You mIGHT noT H AVe LIGHT TonIGHT” 105 damaged. Several Pittsburgh Steamship company barges, brought tocleveland forwinterlayup, similarlybroke loose andwere blown around the harbor breakwater. Other barges were cast ashore. The Isabella J. Boyce, an aging wooden steamer towing a barge, the John J. Barlum, tried a number of times to enter the cleveland harbor...