Samplings: September 1943

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Wreckage caused by the famous Galveston hurricane of 1900

The story of one of North America’s greatest natural disasters, with a popular explanation of how and why hurricanes roar up out of the breathless doldrums one to twenty times each year to destroy what lies in their path

September 7th, 1900, was clear day in Galveston, Texas, a type for which the city is famous. A constant breeze from the Gulf pushed back the continental heat and brought comfort to inhabitants of the Island. Only Mr. Cline, the weatherman, as a part of his routine duty noted the high cirrus clouds moving from the southeast.

Waterfront life moved in its usual bustle throughout the morning. The afternoon arrival of a heavy swell from the southeast caused only a minor flurry among deck hands and dock workers as they shifted hawsers under strident voices of deck officers who sought a firmer bond with land. The waning sun gave way to darkness, and Galveston settled to rest in the ceaseless roar of breaking swells.

By five o’clock the following morning the city was awake to comment on the abnormal tide. In spite of a gentle breeze off the land, the sea perversely rose into lower portions of the city. Some were not only awake but were busily engaged in rescuing stores from salt water. Over all boomed the roar of surf, thundering persistently on the south shore of the Island at intervals of from one to five minutes. There was an ominous overtone in the monotony.

Somewhere in the doldrums west of the Cape Verde Islands, sometime during the preceding weeks, the sun beat down on a calm ocean. Heat waves rolled over the oily surface, and from it rose enormous volumes of heated air, saturated with ocean vapor. The air rose gently at first, for its buoyancy was slight. As each molecule mounted, another moved in from the side to replace it; the motion was moderate but on a vast scale. The earth’s rotation imparted a spin to the currents, and as the warmed air spiraled to higher levels of lower pressure it expanded. With expansion came cooling; with cooling came precipitation; from precipitation came latent heat to rewarm the air and quicken the movement. Light airs flowing gently over the surface of the ocean became a breeze, increased to a wind, mounted to a full gale, rotating counterclockwise. Thus a hurricane was born.

Caught in gentle Westerly Trades, the newborn monster—offspring of tropical calm, torrid heat, and ocean moisture—moved ten to thirty miles an hour, west and north. Lean and voracious at birth, it fattened on each northward mile, eventually to gain a diameter of destruction 300 to 600 miles in extent. Each league northward increased the earth’s rotational effect on the storm path, deflecting the disturbance from west through north, toward the east.

It whirled south of Santo Domingo, cut northward to rip across western Cuba. It might have followed the path of its predecessors up the Atlantic coast, but a wall of high barometric pressure to the north proved an insurmountable barrier. Thwarted on the Gulf side of the Florida Peninsula, the hurricane moved west, almost parallel to the Gulf Coast.

South of the Mississippi Delta the tempest reached full maturity, its screaming winds whirling at 120 miles an hour.