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

by Erik Larson

IN THE MORNING, things looked better. The sun was bright, the air cool and scented with bacon, coffee, and sawdust, the fragrance of a brand-new country.

proposed an elaborate plan that would fill in the wetlands surrounding Pelican Island in Galveston Bay to produce an expanse of land eight feet above sea level called Pelican Territory. A harbor channel was then to be dredged between the territory and Galveston Island, and this was to serve as a portal to a new harbor basin with a surface area of seven thousand acres. The plan promised sure victory over Houston in the race to dominate the Gulf. It did not include a seawall.

When the breezes were sluggish, smoke from coal-fueled steamships drifted over the streets in fat indigo plumes until the entire wharf seemed to smolder.

Waves form by absorbing energy from the wind. The longer the “fetch,” or the expanse of sea over which the wind can blow without obstruction, the taller a wave gets. The taller it gets, the more efficiently it absorbs additional energy. Generally, its maximum height will equal half the speed of the wind. Thus a wind of 150 miles an hour can produce waves up to 75 feet tall.

Whenever a deep-sea swell enters shallow water its leading edge slows. Water piles up behind it. The wave grows again. It is this effect that makes earthquake-spawned tsunamis so deceptive and so deadly. A tsunami travels across the ocean as a small hump of water but at speeds as high as five hundred miles an hour. When it reaches land, it explodes.