I see Milton getting compared to hurricanes that formed in the Gulf of Mexico and hit the Tampa Bay area as far back as 1854. What type of meteorological data did they have back then?
In: Planetary Science
There are photographs of the destruction resulting from this hurricane, and by severity of damage to the landscape (defoliating, vs damaging, vs felling vs tearing out the roots) we can estimate the winds that tore them to pieces.
There were a lot more ships on the ocean in the 1800s. They carried a lot less, but there were more of them. Those that survived a hurricane (always unexpected at that time) would have been able to report where they were when it hit.
The anemometer, that thing with the little cups that spin, is used to measure wind speed and direction. It was invented in 1450 AD.
Fairly-accurate thermometers were invented and refined throughout the 1600s and early 1700s.
Barometers, used to measure air pressure, were invented in 1643.
Hygrometers, used to measure air humidity, were invented in 1783.
The understanding of clouds, storm systems, and how air pressure contributes to storms started in the late 1600s and has been continuously refined to this day.
The point is – by the 1800s, meteorology was a centuries-old science. By the year 1700, there were meteorological societies in every major city and every university conducting measurements. When the telegraph arrived in the 1830s, this enabled real-time communication between these groups, which meant accurate storm tracking between locations. In the second half of the 1800s, nearly every developed nation formed a meteorological department, making nation-wide storm tracking the standard.
Every ship would keep a log of their position, the pressure, windspeed, wind direction, wave height, and general weather condition. When the ship got to port their logs would be copied and kept in various archives for future reference. Even in case of a shipwreck the logs would often be taken onboard the lifeboats and the crew would continue to make observations in them. Most of the ships logs from the thousands of ships sailing the Gulf of Mexico at any time is still available today. We can plot out the observations from each ship on their positions at any point in time and have a pretty accurate picture of the weather systems. It is not as accurate as the methods we have today, and you can only do it after the hurricane have already passed, too late to warn people.
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