History and mysteries · Lakehurst and the Jersey Shore
The 1944 hurricane and Lakehurst’s radar milestone
Documented history · Source reviewed
A storm that damaged the Jersey Shore also became an early scientific observation of a hurricane by radar.
Damage on land, losses at sea
The Great Atlantic Hurricane of September 1944 devastated shore structures in New Jersey. NOAA’s retrospective describes heavy damage to Atlantic City and Ocean City boardwalks and to the Steel and Heinz piers, alongside hundreds of homes.
Much of the storm’s loss of life occurred offshore. NOAA names Coast Guard cutters, a lightship and Navy vessels among the losses. Its nearly 400 deaths at sea apply to the broader storm, not to a New Jersey county or a single wreck.
Watching from the Pines
An experimental Navy radar station at Lakehurst scanned the passing hurricane. NOAA identifies this as the first hurricane observed by radar. A separate flight by Floyd Wood and Harry Wexler produced observations that Wexler published in 1945.
The Lakehurst station connects this coastal disaster directly to the inland Pine Barrens: the storm was both a destructive event and an opportunity to observe a weather system in a new way.
Sources and research limits
NOAA Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory, 70th Anniversary of the Great Atlantic Hurricane, September 15, 2014. Wexler’s original 1945 paper is identified there but was not separately read.