Weathersage Classic Storms: The Perfect Storm

The Perfect Storm
A Narrative by Carolyn Egan

History

The Andrea Gail
(Photo courtesy of Les Nagy)

Sebastian Junger is the author of this best-selling book with the same title. It is a true story about the "Halloween Storm" that blew up off the New England coast in 1991. The three day Nor'easter in the Atlantic Ocean combined with Hurricane Grace and the awesome weather system spanned a two thousand mile stretch of ocean from Jamaica in the Caribbean to Labrador, Canada. The now famous swordfisher, the Andrea Gail, sank with all aboard. The book describes the spine-tingling rescues on other boats that took place in 40 to 100 ft. seas.

The first warning to reach the Massachusetts area was for coastal flooding, announced at 3:15am on October 29th, 1991. By October 31st, onshore the day is calm and mild in Gloucester, deceptively so because the roads to the ocean were blocked off to protect people from the huge gray swells, 30 ft high. The flooding begins in earnest from a storm now stalled 200 miles south of Nantucket, an island off the coast of Massachusetts. The storm that took the Andrea Gail down to its depths has now retrograded back to attack the New England Coast with Gloucester, MA being one of the hardest hit areas. The damages came to roughly 1.5 billion dollars. This was the same storm that brought structural damage to then President Bush's summer home in Kennebunkport, ME. Offshore, it was said the waves reached 100 ft. high - a tempest so rare that meteorologists deemed it "The Perfect Storm". On a sad note, were there enough trained long-range weather forecasters at the time, the grim reaper (Saturn) would have gone wanting.

CHART INFORMATION
LIBRA INGRESS, September 23, 1991, 12:48pm, GMT, Gloucester, MA 42n37, 70w40
The solar ingress chart, the birthchart for a season, describes the weather for the three month fall season. The 4th house planets and cusp sign hold 50% of the information. The sign Aquarius on the 4th house cusp indicates a season that could be colder than normal and overall unstable weather conditions.
The Saturn ruler is conjunct the 4th cusp by minutes and Saturn is at a 90 degree angle to the ascendant, pointing to damage to the environment in some way.

The ascendant sign, Libra, adds a measure of fine, fair weather during the season. The planet Venus is the ruler of Libra and is square to Pluto, a difficult aspect. A Venus and Pluto combination denotes a tropical weather event in the summer or early fall. However, we now know this aspect was indicating the powerful Perfect Storm.

Lunation charts (2) - Full moon, October 23rd, 1991, 11:08:30am, GMT, Gloucester, MA.
More detail is found in the span of the two moon phase charts. The startling view of the first chart is found in its similarity to the ingress chart from a month earlier. The 4th house has the same influences from Saturn and more. Note the 'perfect' grand square with the Sun and Moon occupying the horizon angles. Often the angular placement of the Sun and Moon at a location is where the most intense weather will occur for the period. The 1st and 7th angle on any chart is 'the place' or where the weather will happen.

The degree of the angle is 29 Libra and is about to change to the deadly Scorpio influence, along with a truly malefic trio of planets, Mars, Mercury and Pluto already in Scorpio. This is enough of a visual to send one running to the hills for safety. It is obvious that a long-range weather forecaster could have seen this 'Perfect Storm' well in advance of the disaster.

Last quarter moon, October 30, 1991, 7:11:04 am, GMT, Gloucester, MA
The storm continued into this next moon phase. Here the planets and signs shift as the storm begins to intensify. Sagittarius on the 4th house shows the ruler, Jupiter in detriment (Virgo), sextiling Mars/Scorpio and trining Neptune and Uranus in the 4th. Jupiter is square to the 4th house cusp and since the scope of this storm was huge, we can look to Jupiter, a planet that represents increase, to have been the influence. We already know that the day on shore was rather pleasant but that danger was just around the corner. The ascendant angle shows Venus, conjunct. Venus is an indicator of moisture. The sign Virgo is dry, cold and blustery. The ruler, Mercury is with Pluto in Scorpio. We see the T-square of Sun, Moon and Saturn beginning to bring in the dreaded storm.

Wind Chart - Mercury in Scorpio, Oct. 15, 1991, 2:01pm, GMT, Gloucester, MA
The Mercury ingress charts provide excellent information for wind potential. The 4th house influence (50%) is ruled by Jupiter and this planet promotes breezes and dominates the chart at the midheaven. 25% influence comes from the 1st house. Scorpio is the sign to dissect. Looking at the co-ruler, Mars, active breezes, sitting next to windy Mercury and both are square to Saturn leaves no doubt pronouncing extremely impacting winds.

Other Factors - State of Massachusetts natal - February 6, 1788 2:06 pm EST, Boston, MA
The State of Massachusetts natal chart produces startling transits to angles. Uranus and Neptune were both on the 7th angle and Pluto was squaring the Sun. Saturn at zero Aquarius was about to traverse the 5 planet stellium and the transiting Moon kicked off an opposition to the 5 planet stellium when the storm intensified - the Moon was at zero Leo.

Working more with the natal chart, a symbolic movement of planets called Solar Arc Directions provided a backdrop for the weather event. The Solar Arc Moon had come to be opposite the natal Saturn, Mars opposite Uranus and Uranus conjunct Pluto. There are more than enough events to pull this storm together for all the drama to take place. Frosting on the cake - secondary progressed Moon conjunct Uranus.

The Moon was Perigee October 27th, 1991. The day of the storm, October 30th, there were 3 important parallels of declination. There were the Sun with Mars, Mercury with Saturn and Venus contra-parallel Pluto - all by minutes. The Heliocentric positions of the planets saw Saturn square to the Geo Sun and opposite to the Geo Moon. Helio Venus was 90 degrees to Geo Venus. The clashing and mingling of weather fronts is aptly described with Astrometeorology.
All orbs 1 degree or less.