Q&A on the News

Q: Given the track of recent hurricanes like Hurricane Sandy and Hurricane Irene in 2011, I was wondering what’s the farthest north a hurricane has hit the United States?

—Lance DeLoach, Thomaston

A: Three major hurricanes have hit as far north as Massachusetts, according to the National Weather Service's National Hurricane Center. These were Storm 6 in 1869, the Great New England Hurricane of 1938, also called the Long Island Express, and Hurricane Edna in 1954. Storm 6 killed a person in Massachusetts and knocked out all the telegraph lines between Boston and New York. The Great New England Hurricane killed between 700-800 people and caused $308 million in damage in New York and New England. It made landfall as a Category 3 Hurricane, and Blue Hill Observatory, about 10 miles south of Boston, measured winds of 121 mph with gusts up to 183 mph. The storm destroyed 25,000 cars, half the area's apple crop and knocked down up to 2 billion trees, according to a study by Scott Mandia, a professor at Suffolk County (N.Y.) Community College. On Sept. 11, 1954, Edna hit New England, which was still recovering from Hurricane Carol, which had blazed a similar path just off the East Coast and had smacked Long Island and Connecticut on Aug. 30. Edna, a Category 3 hurricane, was responsible for a total of 29 deaths and $42 million in damage. In Maine alone, it caused eight deaths and $15 million in damage.