The benchmark of his career was as the section director for the Weather Bureau in Galveston, Texas, during the devastating hurricane in It was Cline who raised the hurricane warning flags over the bureau, sensing that the storm was more dangerous than predicted and headed straight for the small island town.
Cline devoted his life to understanding weather and its effects. After completing both a B. Cline worked his way through school as a weather observer, trained by the U. The focus of his career changed, however, after Cline lost his wife and his home in the Galveston hurricane.
He realized that his priority should be in understanding these mammoths of nature, and learning how to chart and predict them. This knowledge could lead to better warning systems and prevent further loss of life.
Cline compiled all of his findings into a landmark textbook, Characteristics of Tropical Cyclones , which quickly became the authority on meteorology throughout the world. Isaac Monroe Cline was a man of many interests and is a man who is perceived in many ways. There typically are two portraits of Cline painted in history books.
One is of a hero, who rode through town warning people of the impending danger of the hurricane. The other is that of an arrogant man who did not think Galveston could be struck by a hurricane of the fierce intensity that washed across the island on Sept. These critics describe a man who encouraged resistance against plans to build a wall to protect the city, a wall that would be built after the Storm.
But neither image is percent correct. Both leave out the Isaac Monroe Cline that his family knew. The great story-telling grandfather who spent countless hours with his children and grandchildren and who visited with friends and strangers in his New Orleans Art House.
Vorus Williams, the son of Rosemary Cline Williams and the grandson of Isaac Cline, remembers a man who would visit frequently and tell stories of his life in the weather service.
Grandpa was an interesting storyteller. Original copies of Cline's books sit on shelves in the Shreveport, La. Glassware, antiques and paintings that once belonged to Cline now rest in the couple's modest Shreveport home.
Since the release of Erik Larson's "Isaac's Storm," and with the approaching centennial anniversary of the Storm, Vorus and Julia Williams have dug out old family photos and personal items of Cline. And Vorus Williams is eager to share stories that Cline told to him as a child. He can recall Cline's stories of Mexico and the great Mississippi floods. In fact, much of what made its way into Cline's memoirs, "Storms, Floods and Sunshine," made its way into the ears of attentive grandchildren listening to a bearded grandfather spin tales of days gone by.
But what was missing from his stories were the horrors of Sept. Cline talked very little about the storm that killed his wife. And his children talked very little about the storm as well. Cline told his grandson stories about the Mississippi River floods of with pride. A flood threatened the Mississippi River valley all the way south to New Orleans. Cline forecast water levels would reach 21 feet at the city.
The U. Weather Service office disagreed and urged him to rescind that warning and continue with flood warnings that omitted any forecasts on flood levels. He disobeyed orders and continued to forecast such high water. The levees at New Orleans were not high enough to keep the Mississippi River in its banks were the river to hit 21 feet.
Cline urged the Levee Board to raise the levees, if only temporarily, to avoid the disaster that would follow if the river overflowed into the city. Though he met resistance in the beginning, he was persistent, and the Levee Board agreed to construct a temporary levee of sandbags and raise the levee from two to four feet - and as high as five feet in some places.
This temporary levee prevented the river from flooding the city for some four weeks, with the river cresting at Another proud moment in Cline's life was the publication of "Tropical Cyclones," a textbook about the devastating weather systems that took his wife's life. The National Weather Bureau went through major changes after the turn of the 20th century, establishing the first regional weather forecast centers outside of the headquarters in Washington, D.
The final addition was in charge of the Gulf Coast, initially comprised of Texas and Oklahoma but soon expanded to include Louisiana, Arkansas, Mississippi, Alabama and Northern Florida.
Isaac Cline was selected to head this last station which was originally located in Galveston. Moore quietly transferred the office to New Orleans. Had publicity been allowed prior to the move, the powerful Texas congressional delegation at the time would most likely have moved to stop it. In early August , Cline and his three daughters Rosemary, Allie, and Esther moved to the Crescent City, where he would serve as district forecaster and eventually the principal meteorologist.
One year later, he married Margaret C. Hayes, and he and his daughters moved into her home on Prytania Street. Luckily for Louisiana, Cline brought an expertise in flood forecasting to New Orleans. As soon as he arrived in the city, he established a study of flood causes and conditions to create a baseline to more accurately identify circumstances that would cause such disasters.
In February , his studies were put to the test when heavy rains foretold dangerous conditions on the Mississippi River. On March 9, without permission of the bureau chief, Cline issued warnings of an impending record flood stage of 21 feet in New Orleans during the following three to four weeks, and encouraged the construction of a temporary levee extension.
Flood waters rose to His supervisors conveniently failed to mention this fact in damage reports after the event. Instead, they planned to remove Cline from his position to save embarrassment on their part.
Nine months later, Cline received an official communication that his forecasts were not up to acceptable standards and as a result, he was being transferred to Honolulu. Only the intervention of the Louisiana congressional delegation saved him from the transfer.
This particular storm possessed the highest wind velocities yet measured on the Gulf Coast: miles per hour. Nearly every building in New Orleans sustained damage, but surprisingly, only lives were lost, many of those at sea, thanks to the Bureau's storm warnings. Never before, perhaps in the history of the Weather Bureau, have such general warnings been disseminated as were sent out by the local bureau in reference to the disturbance that passed over New Orleans Wednesday evening.
Cline's final great professional achievement came when he successfully predicted flood stages two weeks prior to the Great Mississippi Flood of , one of the greatest floods in American history.
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