What is the famous Saxby Gale?
Florence Terriss of Halifax wanted me to tell the story of the Great Saxby Gale. In 1868, a Lieutenant Saxby of the Royal Navy sent a letter to several British newspapers predicting an intense storm and exceptional tides that he said would occur almost a year later, at 7:00 on the morning of October 5, 1869. Late in the afternoon of October 4, 1869, scarcely half a day away from Saxby’s deadline, a storm of hurricane proportions struck the Bay of Fundy. At Saint John, heavy waves pounded ships against the wharves. Buildings were unroofed or blown down, cattle drown, and almost every community around the Bay of Fundy was flooded. This amazing prediction has been called a miracle of meteorology. Because the great storm coincided so closely with Saxby’s prediction, it has been known ever since as the Saxby Gale. The accuracy of Saxby’s forecast, however, owed more to luck than to science. Although the alignment of the sun and moon explains the unusually high tides, it does not account for
