Newly Digitized Data for the Great New England Hurricane of 1938

The Great New England Hurricane of 1938 (H1938) struck New England and the surrounding areas on 21 September 1938 shortly after a 4-day event of significant precipitation and flooding. During the entire period there were 754 stations recording precipitation observations, published by the U.S. Geological Survey in 1940. This information is now improved and added to in several important ways, including digitization of the dataset and mapping with ArcGIS tools, providing new comparisons to commonly cited sources from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration’s (NOAA’s) National Centers for Environmental Information (NCEI). The Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model is initialized with 20th Century Reanalysis data to provide radar reflectivity estimates that resolved a prior problem in the estimated time interval for the break in precipitation between the major flooding event and the hurricane. The model results support the possibility that the preceding rain event may not have been a traditional Predecessor Rain Event, therefore making this a completely separate system unassociated with H1938 that ultimately should not be included in xii hurricane-specific precipitation estimates. This project serves as a valuable first step for further analysis of the precipitation and flooding associated with H1938