Antje’s Hurricane

United States–Mexico, September 8, 1842 

This low-intensity Category 2 (estimated) hurricane crossed the Caribbean Sea between August 30 and September 8, 1842. Named for the schooner Antje, which it dismasted in the east Caribbean on August 30, the hurricane followed an unusual straight-line track west across the Caribbean before making landfall near the town of Victoria, Mexico. Closely traced via ship’s logs and weather reports by one of history’s earliest hurricane watchers, William Redfield, the storm did not follow the curving northward track normally taken by late-season hurricanes, but instead it sailed directly over the Bahamas before brushing past Havana, Cuba, and Key West, Florida, on September 4. While Antje’s Hurricane was of only minor intensity at Key West, in nearby Dove Key its swelling storm surge carried away a small lighthouse and destroyed several outbuildings.

Sources indicate that when the hurricane finally collided head-on with the Mexican coast on the afternoon of September 8, its hefty storm surge flooded the shore as far north as the mouth of the Rio Grande. Its lowest barometric pressure, 28.93 inches (979 mb), was recorded by a weather station in Havana, while observers in Mexico noted that the calm passage of its eye, which was apparently of small diameter, lasted no more than five minutes.

Because of a lack of weather maps that show synoptic conditions over North America for the year 1842, it is nearly impossible to say with any certainty why Antje’s Hurricane followed the unusual course that it did. However, the better-tracked San Ciprian Hurricane of September 1932 followed a similar straight-line route west across Puerto Rico and Hispaniola and into Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula. This-equally unusual course was caused by an intense high-pressure system that blanketed much of North America. With this scenario in mind, it is possible to see how Antje’s Hurricane could have found itself near a similar high-pressure area in 1842, one that firmly kept it from swinging northward.