The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944 tracked up the East Coast into New England only six years after the Long Island Express of 1938 had devastated some of the same shoreline with almost no warning.
This time, forecasters and the Navy had a precedent to work from — and used it.
Ships were moved, some coastal communities evacuated in advance.
The storm still sank a Navy destroyer, two Coast Guard cutters, and a minesweeper, killing roughly 300 people at sea and ashore.
But the death toll on land was a fraction of 1938’s, in a comparably exposed region.
The Storm Council Archivist keeps this comparison on file because it’s a clean before-and-after: the same coastline, six years apart, with memory as the only variable that changed.
Precedent didn’t stop the storm, but it changed how many people were still standing in its way when it arrived.
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