A Most Unusual Tempest: The Story of the 1903 Vagabond Hurricane, New Jersey and NYC's First Superstorm
“The storm reached the city shortly after 8 o’clock in the morning and the high winds prevailed for about two and one half to three hours.” - The New York Times September 17, 1903 It seemed to come completely out of nowhere and smash, without warning, right into the New Jersey coastline just north of Atlantic City in the early morning hours of September 16, 1903. A tropical cyclone with hurricane force winds and drenching rain, ravaging the Jersey Shore, over 1,000 miles north of where storms like this one were supposed to happen. The storm, which at the time was simply called Hurricane Number 4 of 1903 in an era before weather events were given proper names, was so unexpected, and the damage that it caused to the Garden State was so unprecedented that the leading newspaper in Atlantic City at the time, The Atlantic City Press , dubbed it “The Vagabond Hurricane” because it seemed to have mysteriously appeared out of nowhere, destroyed everything in its path, and then l...