Meet the 108-Year-Old 1916 Major Hurricane that Brought 8 Feet of Flood Water to Asheville, NC & Covered All of Biltmore  – Watts Up With That?

Guest essay by Larry Hamlin

With all the climate alarmist hype about Hurricane Helene (and yet more coming with Milton) it seems appropriate to introduced everyone to the Year 1916 Major Hurricane Number 4 that preceded the year 2024 Hurricane Helene visit to Asheville with the headlines shown below and discussed in the WUWT article here.

NOAA’s 1916 Atlantic Hurricane season outcome data is presented below and found here.

The 1916 Major Hurricane Asheville culprit is Number 4 on the list at a time when names were not given to hurricanes and there were no satellites, hurricane hunter aircraft or long-range weather radar systems available to identify and track storms.  

There were 15 numbered Atlantic storms in 1916 even though there easily could have been many more that were never observed during this season because of observation inadequacies compared to today’s available technology.

The Map below is expanded to better show the origin and path of Major Hurricane Number 4 which starts in about the middle of the Map with a square with the number 4 identifying this event.

Major Hurricane Number 4 moves onto the coastline of South Carolina and then finishes by moving into North Carolina and Tennessee as it moved rapidly over the period July 11 to July 15 and ended as a tropical storm and depression in the Asheville area.

Colorado State University’s comprehensive Northern Hemisphere Tropical Cyclone Activity data identify the following pertinent information regarding the 1916 Atlantic hurricane year metrics using their extensive basin archives data base information.

The 1916 Atlantic season had 10 hurricanes as shown below compared to 9 hurricanes so far in this year’s 2024 season.  

The 1916 Atlantic season had 5 major hurricanes as shown below compared to 4 major hurricanes (including Milton) so far in this year’s 2024 season.

The 1916 Atlantic season had a total ACE component of 144 as shown below compared to the 2024 season total 115.6 as of October 7, 2024.

The Atlantic Season 30-year ACE average (1991 – 2020) is at a value of 122.5 so the year 1916 was an above average ACE hurricane year.

In 1916 3 major hurricanes crossed into the contiguous U.S. land region with 2 additional other hurricanes making land strikes as well thus totaling 5 inland hurricane strikes in all.

In 1916 the deepest land strike into the U.S. was Hurricane Number 14 which came up from the Gulf of Mexico and reached into and across the states of Florida, Alabama, Tennessee, Kentucky and ended in Illinois as shown on the map.

Apparently the “hurricanes” of 1916 did not know that future “climate change” was needed to allow hurricanes to reach that high into the U.S.   

If politically driven climate alarmist propagandists had been around 108 years ago it seems certain that the year 1916 outcomes would also have been characterized as being a clear “sign” that hurricanes are getting worse because of “climate change”.