What was the top wind speed of the third cyclone to hit land in New York City?
1821 Norfolk and Long Island hurricane The 1821 Norfolk and Long Island Hurricane was one of four known tropical cyclones that have made landfall in New York City. Another, even more intense hurricane in pre-Columbian times (sometime between 1278 and 1438) left evidence that was detected in southern New Jersey by paleotempestological research. The third was the 1893 New York hurricane, and the fourth was Hurricane Irene in 2011.
Hurricane Rafael Hurricane Rafael produced minor damage in the northeastern Caribbean Sea in mid-October 2012. The seventeenth named storm and ninth hurricane of the annual hurricane season, Rafael originated from a tropical wave roughly 230 mi (370 km) south-southeast of Saint Croix on October 12; because the system already contained tropical storm-force winds, it skipped tropical depression status. Though initially disorganized due to moderate wind shear, a subsequent decrease allowed for shower and thunderstorm activity to develop in earnest by October 14. While moving north-northwestward the following morning, Rafael intensified into a Category 1 hurricane. A cold front off the East Coast of the United States caused the system to turn northward and eventually northeastward by October 16, at which time Rafael attained its peak intensity with maximum sustained winds of 90 mph (150 km/h). As the cyclone entered a more stable atmosphere and tracked across increasingly cooler sea surface temperatures, it began extratropical transition, a process the system completed by the following afternoon.