Meteorological implications of the first voyage of Christopher Columbus

The major conclusions of the first portion of the study include: 1) The Columbian pilots' descriptions of "calms' related to travel slower than travel occurring during other portions of the voyage. That rate of travel compares favourably to calm winds and an oceanic current of 0.4 knots, a value close to modern-day values; 2) The freqeuncy of "calm' events experienced by Christopher Columbus in 1492 is significantly higher than the most liberal estimates of calms in the North Atlantic over the last 100 years; and 3) The locations of the Columbian calms are generally in the same region currently experiencing the highest frequency of calms. The main finding of the second portion of the study is that, based on historical hurricane records from 1886 to 1989, the center of a hurricane would have passed within 100 km of Columbus only once in the past 104 years. -from Authors