The “Long Island Express,’’ still among the strongest and most damaging hurricanes ever to hit the state, made landfall in Milford at 4 p.m. on Sept. 21, 1938, and changed the region forever.
The primitive storm-tracking capabilities of the day indicated that the storm, after brushing the Carolinas, would head out to sea. Instead it hugged the coast, arriving here with maximum sustained winds of 115 miles per hour.
The storm surge brought high tide in Stamford that evening to 14.1 feet above normal, according to the National Weather Service. The maximum high tide in Bridgeport was recorded at 12.8 feet above mean. The hurricane’s impact was compounded by devastating high winds, but especially because it hit during an autumnal equinox, producing huge tide surges.
The National Hurricane Center estimates that the hurricane killed 700 people, destroyed 8,900 homes and commercial buildings, and ripped down about 2 billion trees across a region that included New York City and Westchester, the southern half of Connecticut, all of Rhode Island and coastal Massachusetts.
The damage across the region totaled $620 million in 1938 dollars, equivalent to about $41 billion today, according to the National Weather Service. Visit the NWS site on the 1938 hurricane here.
One Fairfield resident died in the hurricane, and at least 50 Fairfield families were evacuated from the beach area, according to data from the Fairfield History Center. Click here to continue reading
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