No Warning In Galveston
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On September 8, 1900, a hurricane leveled the city of Galveston, TX. Sadly, because of the arrogance of the newly formed Weather Bureau, the residents of Galveston never received a warning that the storm was approaching. Hi, I'm Dave Thurlow and this is The Weather Notebook.

"His house had disappeared, along with everything that described his past-all his photographs, letters, his beloved Bible, and the manuscript of his nearly finished book on climate and health, the second time the book had been destroyed." - Excerpt from Isaac's Storm

Author Erik Larson, has written a book about the Galveston Hurricane, entitled "Isaac's Storm". He said that the arrogance of the weather bureau was due to a string of forecasting successes during the Spanish American War.

"The US guys were pretty full of themselves, kind of believed that they had a lock on the weather and treated the indigenous Cuban weatherman with great disdain, even though, it was very ironic because the indigenous weathermen were the guys who had pioneered hurricane prediction."

Larson points out that the residents of Galveston could have been warned of an approaching storm as the hurricane passed over Cuba, but US forecasters in Cuba chose not to believe the predictions of the Cuban forecasters. And even if the Weather Bureau in Galveston had received bad news from their forecasters in Cuba, it probably wouldn't have issued a warning, due to the politics of the Weather Bureau at the time:

"Within the bureau, there was a ban on issuing local storm warnings. The fear being that this would cause panic and so forth and if the storm never came, then it would be an embarrassment. So, all storm warnings had to come from Washington. And clearly in this case, no hurricane warning ever reached Galveston."

The result: 12,000 lives lost, the worst hurricane disaster in our nations history. To purchase a copy of "Isaac's Storm", please visit our website at weathernotebook.org.

The Weather Notebook is funded by Subaru and the National Science Foundation.

 
Related Links

The 1900 Storm: A Pictorial
Online slide show of the heavy damage suffered throughout the island.

Isaac Cline's official report to the Weather Bureau Office, September 23, 1900

 

Isaac's Storm A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History   "An absurd delusion," is how Isaac Cline, a dedicated and highly trained first-generation employee of the new U.S. Weather Bureau, characterized the fear that any hurricane posed a serious danger to the burgeoning city of Galveston, Texas. Based partly on Cline's expert opinion, Galveston dismissed a proposal to erect a seawall, claiming it a needless, wasteful expense. In 1900, Cline's words reflected not only his own opinion but also the spirit -- what would one day be seen as the hubris -- of his time.