North Carolina’s Hurricane History
North Carolina’s Hurricane History – Review
Jay Barnes’ “North Carolina’s Hurricane History” is a important resource on all hurricanes to strike North Carolina through 1999. Drawn largely from newspaper and other contemporary accounts, Barnes chronologically recounts every hurricane to strike North Carolina with private entries for each storm. Although Barnes’ story begins in the sixteenth century, his stories of big hurricanes are, for apparent reasons, shorter and sketchier than the modern (post-WWII) hurricanes. He writes longer entries on the more notable and notable hurricanes, such as Hazel, Fran, and Floyd, but he still includes hurricanes that struck other areas (such as the Gulf Coast) and barely affected North Carolina through torrential rains and flooding. Barnes story besides reminds us possibly living in this period of greatly increased hurricane activity that some time periods, such as the late 1950s, were just as bad. The book does have a couple of weaknesses. Although each hurricane entry contains a miniature map illustrating the hurricane’s path, the book required a complete record of eastern North Carolina as a reference for the reader. Even the lifelong downeasters might need a map to identify every county, town, and hamlet that Barnes writes about. Also, Barnes goes out of his story the advances in hurricane tracking and forecasting, so there is no real common context behind many of these storms (the unrealized terrors of the larger storms, or the sudden and sudden stamps of the pre-satellite era). Overall, this is a very good and useful reference on all of the hurricanes to have struck North Carolina through 1999. Unfortunately, the book was originally published before Isabel in 2003, because it would have physically fit well into this narrative. This book is a important resource for any North Carolinian or anyone interested in hurricanes and extra storms.