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1814: Logs in swollen Maine rivers cause destruction

1814: Logs in swollen Maine rivers cause destruction

Author: AccuWeather May 17, 2022 Duration: 2:24
This Date in Weather History
History
The state of Maine is known for many things, including my favorite, Maine lobsters. But one of the longest running industries in North America, dating back until the early 1600s is logging. The British Royal Navy quickly claimed the best stands of light and strong Eastern White Pine for the masts, spars, and planking for their fast and maneuverable ships. England's competitors, the French, the Dutch, and the Spanish, were left to build from the heavier Baltic Fir. It was Revolutionary War debt which boosted the first large scale harvests. To raise money, Massachusetts sold land to the District of Maine. Logging operations grew in proportion to the national demand for lumber products, which grew in proportion to the expansion of the nation itself over the 19th and well into the 20th centuries. The industry became extensive and complex employing surveyors to identify likely stands of trees, lumbermen to cut timber, teamsters and their draft animals to haul logs, scalers to measure the timber's worth, and river drivers to float logs to the mills. Most trees were felled in the late fall and winter and then floated downstream on Maine’s rivers to ports at the coast. These golden rivers, as they were called, because of their color appearance because of the logs and the money the wood would represent on delivery were covered from bank to bank with floating timber. Most of the time they were controlled by crews working the river. But as they floated downstream in the spring they would sometimes get loose and out of control. The result could be, and often times was disaster as the timber acted like a battering ram destroying anything in its path. On May 17, 1814 after a soggy April and early May the rivers were all swollen and the logs did their work wiping out anything in their path, destroying bridges and docks and any structures near the shore. It would take years to recover.

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Every day has a story written in the wind and rain, and This Date in Weather History uncovers those narratives. With AccuWeather Meteorologist Evan Myers as your guide, this daily podcast connects the present to pivotal moments where weather dramatically altered the course of events. You might hear about a forgotten blizzard that stranded a city, a hurricane that redirected a war, or a simple shift in the breeze that allowed a historic discovery. It’s more than just a list of facts; it’s a look at how the atmosphere has been a relentless and fascinating character in the human drama. Each brief episode offers a specific, grounded tale, revealing how the climate has shaped cultures, economies, and personal lives in ways we often overlook. Tune in for a thoughtful blend of meteorology and historical context, delivered with the authority of AccuWeather. This podcast turns the calendar into a map of atmospheric intrigue, reminding us that the past is always present in the sky above.
Author: Language: English Episodes: 50

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This Date in Weather History
Podcast Episodes
1921: Cloudburst causes 10' of flooding in Pueblo, CO [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:14
What started out as just another day in June in Colorado in 1921, rapidly turned into one that would never be forgotten in the town of Pueblo, Colorado. A cloudburst enveloped the town the afternoon of June 3, 1921. Duri…
1889: Flooding of the Potomac River [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:12
On June 2, 1889, the same heavy rains caused that had helped cause massive flooding in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, overwhelmed the South Fork Dam several days before, hit the Washington, DC, area. Most of the roads in DC at…
1965: Tropical system causes 30k fatalities in Bangladesh [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:44
The World Health Organization reports that nation of Bangladesh is especially vulnerable to tropical cyclones, known as hurricanes near the United States, because of its location at the triangular shaped head of the Bay…
1889: The Johnstown Flood [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 4:06
Johnstown, Pennsylvania, lies hard against the Conemaugh River in its deep valley in the western part of the state. Founded in 1770, it grew quickly as the Civil War approached, fortunes were made in iron, coal and steel…
1879: The Real-life inspiration for "The Wizard of Oz" [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:13
On May 30, 1879 the town of Irving, Kansas in the northeastern part of the state was a growing farm community with several hundred residents. Today, though Irving is a ghost town. On May 30, 1879, two tornados destroyed…
1914: Empress of Ireland and Storstad ships collide [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 3:08
From 1900 until 1914 almost 100,000 passengers in ocean liners, crossed the Atlantic to Canada, mainly from Great Britain. The main port of entry and embarkation to and from Canada was Quebec City, on the St Lawrence Riv…
1880: 1' of rain falls in less than 2 hours in Brackettville, TX [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 2:24
Brackettville, the county seat of Kinney County in Texas, is on U.S. Highway 90 twenty-two miles northeast of the Rio Grande and 125 miles west of San Antonio. It is named after Oscar Brackett, who established the first…
2008: "Pneumonia Front" causes big temperature drops in Chicago [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:59
The term Pneumonia front, first coined by Milwaukee Weather Bureau Office in the 1960s, is used to describe a rare meteorological phenomenon observed on the western Lake Michigan shoreline during the warm season. These f…
1987: A fisherman is struck and killed by lightning [not-audio_url] [/not-audio_url]

Duration: 1:51
The number of people killed by lightning in recent years is a far cry from annual lightning deaths decades ago. In the 1940s, for instance, hundreds of people were killed each year by lightning. In 1943 alone, 432 people…

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