Hurricane

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On the morning of Sunday, October fourth, the Caribbean Sea lay oily and still under a hot white sun. The water temperature was unusually high. The barometric pressure was low. There was an odd mistiness that merged sea and sky at the horizon line. This flat hot sea was the womb of hurricane.

The sun climbed higher. The heated air rose as a great column. Shortly after midday, in a fifty-square-mile area about two hundred nautical miles north of Barranquilla, the ascending heated air began an ominous spiraling movement, a counter-clockwise twisting. The sky in that area began to darken, and the first winds began.

Ships closest to the area made the first radio reports. Streamers of high cirrus clouds gave warning. Great, slow swells began to radiate from the area, moving with a surprising speed, traveling to the islands of the Greater and Lesser Antilles, breaking on island shores in a cadence of five or six a minute as against the tropic norm of eight.

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