Will Hurricane Earl be another “perfect storm?” Hurricane Earl has been compared to the Great Hurricane of 1938, America’s worst natural disaster as history records. Also called “The Long Island Express,” the ’38 storm hit New England by surprise and killed between six and 800 people, most of them Rhode Islanders. The similarities of the two giant hurricanes are not exclusive to weather, wind strength, and path, the Great Hurricane of 1938 occurred during the first Great Depression. Watch this rare video created by Roosevelt’s New Deal/ WPA.