The pre-1600 Atlantic hurricane seasons talks about all known Atlantic tropical cyclones before to 1600. While info for every storm that happened is not available, some parts of the coastline had enough people to give info of hurricane happenings. Each season was an event in the annual cycle of tropical cyclone formation in the Atlantic basin. Most tropical cyclone formation occurs between June 1 and November 30.
Observation info for years before 1492 is completely unavailable because record keeping was non-existent in the pre-Columbian era, and any records that may have once existed have long since been lost. Even info from the early years of the Columbian era is suspect and incomplete because the difference between a hurricane and an extratropical system was not drawn by Renaissance scientists and sailors and because European exploration and colonization of the regions affected by hurricanes did not begin in earnest until the mid-16th century.
However, paleotempestological research allows reconstruction of pre-historic hurricane activity trends on timescales of centuries to millennia. A theory has been postulated that an anti-phase pattern exists between the Gulf of Mexico coast and the Atlantic coast. During the quiescent periods, a more northeasterly position of the Azores High would result in more hurricanes being steered towards the Atlantic coast. During the hyperactive period, more hurricanes were steered towards the Gulf coast as the Azores High—controlled by the North Atlantic Oscillation—was shifted to a more southwesterly position near the Caribbean. In fact, few major hurricanes struck the Gulf coast during 3000–1400 BC and again during the most recent millennium; these quiescent intervals were separated by a hyperactive period during 1400 BC and 1000 AD, when the Gulf coast was struck frequently by catastrophic hurricanes and their landfall probabilities increased by 3–5 times.[1] On the Atlantic coast, chance of landfalling hurricanes has doubled in the recent millennium compared to the one and a half millennia before.[2]
| Year |
Location |
Date |
Deaths |
Damage/Notes |
| 1494 |
Hispaniola |
June 16 |
N/A |
Possible hurricane; could have been the first hurricane in the Western Hemisphere observed and reported by Europeans. |
| 1495 |
West Indies |
N/A |
N/A |
3 ships sunk, earliest definite report of a hurricane, came from Christopher Columbus; "Nothing but the service of God and the extension of monarchy would expose me to such danger" |
| 1500 |
Bahamas |
July |
N/A |
2 ships destroyed |
| 1502 |
Hispaniola |
July 1 |
N/A |
20 ships, all on board perished |
| 1502 |
Offshore Dominican Republic |
11 July |
500 |
N/A |
| 1502 |
Honduras |
16 September |
N/A |
1 ship sunk, all drowned aboard |
| 1504 |
North Coast of Colombia |
N/A |
175 |
N/A |
| 1508 |
Dominican Republic |
12 August |
Many |
Destroyed entire population of Buenaventura |
| 1509 |
Santo Domingo |
29 July |
N/A |
Moderate damage |
| 1515 |
Puerto Rico |
July |
Many natives |
N/A |
| 1519 |
Jamaica |
N/A |
N/A |
Ship sunk, 18 survived |
| 1520 |
Dominican Republic |
N/A |
N/A |
N/A |
| 1523 |
Florida west coast |
N/A |
N/A |
2 ships and their crews lost |
| 1524 |
Cuba |
October |
73 |
N/A |
Other pages[change]
- ↑ Liu, Kam-biu; Fearn, Miriam L. (2000). "Reconstruction of Prehistoric Landfall Frequencies of Catastrophic Hurricanes in Northwestern Florida from Lake Sediment Records". Quaternary Research 54 (2): 238–245. doi:10.1006/qres.2000.2166.
- ↑ Scott, D. B.; et al. (2003). "Records of prehistoric hurricanes on the South Carolina coast based on micropaleontological and sedimentological evidence, with comparison to other Atlantic Coast records". Geological Society of America Bulletin 115 (9): 1027–1039. doi:10.1130/B25011.1.
Further reading[change]
- Caviedes, César N. (1991). "Five hundred years of hurricanes in the Caribbean: Their relationship with global climatic variabilities". GeoJournal 23 (4): 301–310. doi:10.1007/BF00193603.
- García-Herrera, Ricardo; et al. (2005). "New records of Atlantic hurricanes from Spanish documentary sources". Journal of Geophysical Research 110: D03109. doi:10.1029/2004JD005272.
- Ludlum, David McWilliams (1963). Early American Hurricanes, 1492-1870. Boston: American Meteorological Society. OCLC 511649.
- Millás, José Carlos (1968). Hurricanes of the Caribbean and Adjacent Regions, 1492-1800. Miami: Academy of the Arts and Sciences of the Americas. OCLC 339427.
Other websites[change]
