Perfect Storm

1991 Perfect Storm

The 1991 Perfect Storm, also known as The No-Name Storm and the Halloween Gale/Storm, was a damaging and deadly nor'easter that lasted from October 28 to November 2, 1991. While initially an extratropical cyclone, it absorbed Hurricane Grace to its south, later evolving into a small, unnamed Category 1 hurricane. The storm lashed the East coast of the United States with high waves and coastal flooding during its extratropical cyclone phase. Damage from the storm totaled over $200 million and resulted in thirteen fatalities, six of them from the sinking of the Andrea Gail, a fishing boat. The nor'easter received its name, playing off the common expression, after a conversation between Boston National Weather Service forecaster Robert Case and author Sebastian Junger.

The Perfect Storm (book)

The Perfect Storm is a creative nonfiction book written by Sebastian Junger and published by W. W. Norton & Company in 1997. The paperback edition (ISBN 0-06-097747-7) followed in 1999 from HarperCollins' Perennial imprint. The book is about the 1991 Perfect Storm that hit North America between October 28 and November 4, 1991, and features the crew of the fishing boat Andrea Gail, from Gloucester, Massachusetts, who were lost at sea during severe conditions while longline fishing for swordfish 575 miles (925 km) out. Also in the book is the story about the rescue of the three-person crew of the sailboat Satori in the Atlantic Ocean during the storm by the U.S. Coast Guard Cutter Tamaroa (WMEC-166).

Perfect storm

A perfect storm is a meteorological event aggravated by a rare combination of circumstances. The term is used by analogy to an unusually severe storm that results from a rare combination of meteorological phenomena.

Storm

A storm is any disturbed state of the natural environment or the atmosphere of an astronomical body. It may be marked by significant disruptions to normal conditions such as strong wind, tornadoes, hail, thunder and lightning, heavy precipitation, heavy freezing rain, strong winds, wind transporting some substance through the atmosphere such as in a dust storm, among other forms of severe weather.

perfect storm

Noun

1. A powerful hurricane or other major weather disturbance, especially as produced by a combination of meteorological conditions.
2. A convergence of multiple adverse factors that together create a critical, disastrous, or unusually severe situation.