Deadliest Hurricane in the US: Galveston 1900

It's the deadliest hurricane to ever strike the United States. The Great Galveston Hurricane made landfall September 8, 1900. The category 4 storm killed an estimated 8,000 people, though some estimates go as high 12,000. But what made this storm so deadly?

I'm Storm Shield Meteorologist Jason Meyers.

Even though this hurricane is the deadliest the US has ever seen, the Galveston hurricane wasn't the biggest or the strongest in any way. It was so deadly because of a lack of technology and disregarding the forecasts.

In 1900, the only way we knew about hurricanes in the ocean was from ships that had been at sea and weather reports telegraphed from islands in the Caribbean.

In the weeks and days leading up to this hurricane, arriving had reported unsettled weather in the Atlantic. Then, damage reports started coming in from Cuba, then Florida and along the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi.

A day before the storm made landfall, the US Weather Bureau issued storm warnings from Pensacola, Florida to Galveston, Texas, and residents didn't know about the warning until they saw it in the newspaper.

On top of that, very few people in Texas took the warnings seriously, because most local meteorologists kept thinking the storm would make landfall elsewhere, contrary to what the Cuban meteorologists were saying.

The day of the storm, ocean waves grew, winds picked up, and rain began to roll in.

With a population of roughly 37,000 unevacuated people in a city only a little more than eight and a half feet above sea level and a storm surge of fifteen feet, this was a recipe for disaster.

3,600 buildings were destroyed. Bridges to the mainland and telegraph lines were gone, so word of the destruction didn't even reach anyone until a handful of survivors could take a boat to the other side of Galveston Bay making their way to Houston two days after the storm.

Since 1900, we've been safer because of inventions like radio, TV, and smartphones with instantaneous warnings. We also have radar, satellites that provide 24/7 monitoring of the oceans where hurricanes form, hurricane hunter airplanes and drones, and improved forecasts all to help protect life in hurricane prone areas.

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