On 6 October 1804, noted Salem, Mass., diarist William Bentley noted an “uncommon scarcity of Fish in our Bay” and pondered, “Do the storms drive fish from our surroundings?” One wonders if he answered himself in the affirmative when, on the morning of 9 October a violent storm bore down, 带来狂风, 大雨, and an early season snow in some areas. 在随后的日子里, Bentley detailed the damage done in Salem, recorded reports of damage from elsewhere, and made a remarkably prescient statement about climate change (although he did not understand it as we do today) and the increasing violence of storms.

I cannot refuse to adopt the belief that the late storm was the most severe ever felt in this part of America. All the accounts which I have seen represent nothing like it. In Boston, the old people are said to represent that a storm like it happened 16 September 1727. As yet I have found no tradition of such a storm among our old people or upon record or any report of its consequences. I suspect that as our winters have less horrour we partake more of a southern climate from the great quantity of heat & consequently have more stormy weather of this kind & therefore may expect more of it in future years.

如此广泛和严重的破坏

While wind and rain were the chief cause of storm damage near the coast, inland snows—arriving before crops were harvested for the season—were of chief concern. 就在纽黑文北部, through the Berkshires of Massachusetts, 北至佛蒙特州, snow blanketed the region as documented in the Political Observatory of Walpole, 佛蒙特州.

Accounts from every direction prove the destructive effect of the late storm of snow, particularly on timber and fruit trees. 如此广泛和严重的破坏 was never before made in this part of the county. We have seen the devastation in some of the orchards nearly equal to that of a tornado; Scaresely [sic] a tree remains uninjured; many have left but here and there a solitary branch, and some are rent through the length of their trunks and prostrated each way on the earth … The quantity of fruit must be lessened for years to come, which is more unhappy as there is but a small supply of cider the present season.

Apples were not the only crop destroyed—unharvested onions and potatoes were frozen in the ground until spring, 晚熟的玉米倒下了. Some areas in 佛蒙特州 received in excess of 20 inches of snow, 在一些地方, 一直持续到春天. 当天气放晴时, the snow hurricane of 1804 would be long remembered, at least until the next “big one.”

尖塔倒了

Erected in 1740 and having survived (and played a starring role in) the Revolutionary War, the steeple of the Old North Church was no match for the October 1804 storm. As depicted in the sideways 图像 on the top of the broadside, 尖塔被风吹倒了, destroying a house below whose occupants were fortunately away from home. By 1806, a new steeple designed by Charles Bulfinch, 短了15英尺, but crowned by the original Shem Drowne weathervane, 高耸于北端. That steeple would survive until it was razed by Hurricane Carol in 1954. 1804年, only the weathervane survived and a new steeple, 忠实于1740年的原始设计, rose again over the city the very next year. The Old North was not the only church to lose its top in the 1804 storm. 根据Perley的说法 新英格兰的历史性风暴, the roof of the Baptist Church in Charlestown was blown off, 另一个“大弯”的塔尖,“丹佛的教堂”没有屋顶,” and the roof of King’s Chapel “torn from the tower … and conveyed two hundred feet.”