Until this year, I could not imagine a world in which a hurricane could sneak up on a country. I have been blessed to grow up in a country where meteorologists tracked weather systems and, with growing precision every year, could forecast where such a storm would make landfall and how wide an area would likely experience hurricane-force or tropical storm-force wind.
With a few exceptions, with the support of the National Weather Bureau, meteorologists have been able to predict within a margin of error how much rain and the wind velocity localities can expect from a hurricane.
The Trump Administration sees no benefit in science, and that includes the work of the National Weather Bureau. If the National Weather Bureau is dismantled, we will not be much better off than the people of Galveston, Texas were in 1900.
Galveston, Texas, in 1900
Galveston, Texas was a thriving city of 37,700 people in 1900. It claimed to be the “third richest city in the United States in proportion to population.” The seaport was booming. Sixty percent of the cotton grown in Texas was being exported through the port at Galveston.
Victorian mansions and public buildings were being built with elaborate architecture. The banking industry was booming. Grand social events filled the calendars of the elite citizens. All the modern conveniences of the time could be enjoyed in Galveston.
Things couldn’t have been going better!
In fact, things were going so well that residents became complacent, ignoring the fact that their city was on an island in the Gulf of Mexico and it’s highest point was just nine feet above sea level.
September 8, 1900
Although the U.S. Weather Bureau issued a hurricane warning on September 4, most Galveston residents ignored it.
Accustomed to weathering tropical storms, the residents paid little attention to the downpours of rain on the morning of September 8, 1900, even as Isaac Cline, the chief meteorologist at the Galveston Weather Bureau went door-to-door to warn people of the imminent danger. By afternoon, though, the tide was rising at an alarming rate and the wind had picked up.
By mid-afternoon, much of the city was flooded, but the worst was yet to come. It is now estimated that sustained winds reached at least 145 miles per hour that evening and there was a fifteen-foot storm surge.
When the next morning came, the sea was calm but 3,600 houses and businesses were gone. Entire blocks closest to the beach had been wiped away, and more than 6,000 people had died.
With all transportation and communication with the mainland destroyed, Galveston was cut off from the outside world for days as the survivors faced the grim task of disposing of bodies.
After burials at sea turned out to be unsatisfactory, funeral pyres were put up along the beach and bodies were burned for weeks after the storm.
After the Galveston hurricane
A seventeen-foot seawall was constructed in Galveston, which saved the city during future hurricane.
On a wider scope, the hurricane drew focus on the need for improved weather forecasting and warning systems. Weather stations were established through the Caribbean, and ships started tracking storms.
Late-20th-century and early 21st-century technological advances have made hurricane tracking and route predictions more precise, yet Mother Nature is a force stronger than any system of predictions. Even with all the various computer models that predict the path a hurricane will take, they are so large and so powerful that there is still uncertainty.
No one predicted the speed with which Hurricane Hugo would plow across South Carolina and the southern piedmont of North Carolina 200 miles inland in 1989. And no one predicted the extent of flooding and damage Hurricane Helene would do more than 500 miles inland in September 2024.
Even with the best technology, we are still vulnerable to hurricanes, but the warning system we have had in place in the 21st century is light years ahead of the warnings that were possible in 1900.
One hundred and twenty-five years later, the September 8, 1900, hurricane that hit Galveston still holds the record as the worst natural disaster to ever hit the United States, in terms of lives lost.
In 2025, we must fight for the National Weather Bureau to remain intact so no city is walloped with little warning like Galveston was in 1900.
Speaking of hurricanes…
Hurricane Helene Update
As of Friday, 37 roads in North Carolina were still closed due to Hurricane Helene, which hit the mountains in the western part of the state on September 26, 2024. That count includes five US highways, two state highways, and 30 state roads.
Janet
Janet's Writing Blog 