Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 86.djvu/561

Rh

URING the winter of 1913–1914 three unusually severe storms with violent on-shore winds visited the coast of New Jersey. The first of these, known as "the Christmas storm," attained its maximum strength early on the morning of December 26, and was accompanied by winds which attained a velocity of 123 miles an hour. Professor W. M. Wilson gives the following brief description of this storm in the Monthly Weather Review for December, 1913.

The second, or "New-Year's storm," was even more disastrous than the first, partly because the coast had been left in an unprotected condition by the preceding attack. On January 4 the fury of the second storm reached its maximum. Driven by a terrific gale whose extreme velocity reached 120 miles per hour, the waves broke upon the beach with a thunderous roar. Bulkheads which had been destroyed or weakened during the earlier storm afforded no protection for the unconsolidated sand of the beach, and every wave seemed to sweep a little of it out to sea. At Seabright groups of dejected men, soaked to the skin by driving rain and salt spray, stood helplessly by the shore and watched the waves remove the land from under their houses, the houses tip over into the sea, and the waves pound them to kindling wood in the space of a few moments. Others labored to place wooden rollers