“When the Nortes Reign”: Cold Front Winter Storms, Wrecked Conquests, and Weathered Colonialism in the Western Caribbean, 1492–1600

This article studies sixteenth-century nortes, the colloquial name for cold front winter storms and winds, in the western Caribbean and Gulf of Mexico. Using chronicle sources, conquistador accounts, and archival research, I argue that nortes shaped Spanish invasions and colonial rule in the region. Nortes are less powerful and less tightly organized around a rotating eye than hurricanes, but they occur far more frequently from October through April annually. In the sixteenth century they decimated expeditions, drowned many people, sank ships, and battered the emerging maritime empire. Individuals adapted by harnessing the storms for their own gain. The interface between colonization and the climate left behind what I call a weathered colonialism. Winter gales more broadly reveal how the Little Ice Age at the lower latitudes inflected Spanish invasions and colonialism there, while also illuminating the lived experiences of both famous conquistadores and anonymous nonelite actors who navigated this coalescing seaborne world.