Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History

by Erik Larson

In 1979 a tropical storm named Claudette blew off the Gulf of Mexico near Galveston and deluged the town of Alvin, Texas, with forty-two inches of rain in twenty-four hours, still the U.S. record for sheer intensity. A Philippine typhoon holds the world’s record, dropping 73.62 inches in twenty-four hours. Total accumulations have been higher, however. Ninety-six and a half inches of rain once fell on Silver Hill, Jamaica, over four days. That’s eight feet. In 1899 a hurricane dropped an estimated 2.6 billion tons of water on Puerto Rico. Hurricane Camille, which came ashore on the Gulf Coast in August 1969, was still flush with water two days later when it reached Virginia. With no advance warning from the Weather Bureau, it jettisoned thirty inches of rain in six hours. Hillsides turned to mud, then to an earthen slurry that flowed at highway speeds. In Virginia alone, 109 people lost their lives. Camille’s rain fell with such ferocity it was said to have filled the overhead nostrils of birds and drowned them from the trees.