Just over thirty years ago, a trio of atmospheric factors came together to form a storm so uniquely dangerous and powerful that its mesmerizing development could only be described in one way: perfect.
As Accuweather reports, that’s how Bob Case, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Boston, categorized the storm at the time. Case’s use of the term perfect would go on to serve as inspiration for author Sebastian Junger, who wrote a critically acclaimed 1997 novel about the storm, detailing the tragic fate of the Andrea Gail, a commercial fishing vessel from Gloucester, Massachusetts, that was lost at sea with six crew members on board following a fishing trip in the northern Atlantic.
Three years after the book’s publication, the storm was immortalized on the big screen in a movie of the same name. George Clooney, Mark Wahlberg and Diane Lane led a cast that turned the film into a box office smash hit and cemented the storm’s legacy in the pop-culture consciousness.
All of this was predicated by what turned out to be an extraordinary meteorological setup.
The Perfect Storm began with a strong disturbance that passed through New England on Oct. 27, 1991. A high-pressure system built over southeast Canada, allowing a low-pressure system that tailed the front to intensify rapidly. This process was enhanced when what remained of Hurricane Grace, approaching from the south, passed through the area and provided ample tropical energy to create an intense storm.
“These circumstances alone could have created a strong storm,” Case said in an interview with The Associated Press back in 2000 around when the movie was released. “But then, like throwing gasoline on a fire, a dying Hurricane Grace delivered immeasurable tropical energy to create the Perfect Storm.”
As Hurricane Grace weakened and the circulation that would become the Perfect Storm continued to strengthen, Grace got pulled into the developing Perfect Storm. “The capture of Grace into the Perfect Storm led to further strengthening due to the temperature contrast between the warm moist unstable air within Grace’s circulation and the colder circulation within the developing storm,” said AccuWeather Hurricane Expert Dan Kottlowski.
With the Perfect Storm dropping to a pressure of 28.70 inches (972 mb) and a strong high-pressure system to the north, an intense pressure gradient formed, kicking up strong winds from the Carolina coast northward, which caused massive waves.
“It was an unprecedented set of circumstances,” Case, who died in 2008, said of the Perfect Storm.
According to the United States Coast Guard’s investigation into what happened to the Andrea Gail, the doomed vessel sent its last transmission at around 6 p.m. on Oct. 28, 1991, about 162 mi (261 km) east of Sable Island, located about 180 miles offshore of Halifax, Nova Scotia. The captain, Billy Tyne, gave a final weather report to Linda Greenlaw, captain of a fellow swordfishing boat, the Hannah Boden, noting that he and his crew were experiencing winds of more than 90 miles per hour and 30-foot-tall waves.
Some of the waves that slammed into the Andrea Gail were at least 39 feet high, approaching the height of a typical four-story building. In fact, Canadian weather buoys in the area reported peak wave heights in excess of 60 feet tall, with wind gusts approaching major hurricane force, according to the Coast Guard’s investigation.
An all-out search for the crew and the Andrea Gail involving U.S. and Canadian militaries began Oct. 31, after the ship’s owner, Robert Brown, reported it overdue from the fishing expedition the day prior.
The search effort covered about 109,000 square miles and covered areas from the Grand Banks off Newfoundland, where the ship had been fishing, to Cape Cod, according to the Coast Guard report. The search effort was suspended late on the evening of Nov. 9 due to the “low probability of crew survival.”
On Nov. 6, just days before the search was called off, a fishing net, a propane cylinder and an Emergency Position Indicating Radio Beacon were found by members of Canada’s air rescue operations on the southwest corner of Sable Island, a small slice of land in the northwest Atlantic about 185 miles south of Halifax. The island is known by the ominous nickname “Graveyard of the Atlantic.” The items recovered by the air rescue crew were believed to belong to the Andrea Gail.
Meanwhile, on Nov. 8, the Hannah Boden spotted a white full barrel with the initials A.G. on the side. But the barrels weren’t retrieved, and a positive identification wasn’t able to be made, according to the report. No distress calls were ever reported or received from the Andrea Gail.
The Perfect Storm did eventually become a full-fledged hurricane by early November 1991, but it was never officially named by the National Hurricane Center, as the NHC feared naming the storm would have been confusing as with much of the Northeast was already recovering from the previous extratropical system. If named, the storm would have been known as Henri, a moniker that was later used in 2003, 2019, 2015, and in 2021.
All told, buoys recorded waves of 101 feet, with swells and waves causing considerable damage to coastal areas along the East Coast of the United States, according to Kottlowski. The Perfect Storm caused significant damage up and down the East Coast, despite never making landfall in the United States. Extreme waves alongside high tides damaged properties from North Carolina to Maine, with a pier destroyed as far south as Florida and high waves in Puerto Rico sweeping a man out to sea.
Thirty years on, as a result of the remarkable confluence of weather conditions and the ensuing book and blockbuster movie, the storm occupies a unique space in the American psyche. And all these years later, the tragedy echoes most, perhaps, in the coastal fishing town from where the Andrea Gail set sail on its fatal voyage.
The city of Gloucester has had an important relationship with the sea since the city’s founding in the 17th century. A vital fishing and shipbuilding center, Gloucester is home to the nation’s oldest fishing seaport, fresh seafood and picturesque lighthouses.
City officials have taken steps to make sure crew members of the Andrea Gail will never be forgotten. Their names — Michael Moran, Dale Murphy, Alfred Pierre, Robert Shatford, David Sullivan, Frank “Billy” Tyne Jr. — were inscribed at the base of an eight-foot-tall fisherman’s memorial that overlooks Gloucester Harbor along with those of hundreds of other anglers who have lost their lives out on the high seas.
With climate change intensifying storms exponentially in recent years, could such a storm ever take shape again? “Given that water temperatures are even warmer than what they were back in 1991, it would not be surprising if a similar setup like what happened in 1991 [happens] again within the next few years,” said Kottlowski.
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