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

by Erik Larson

It was a time, wrote Sen. Chauncey Depew, one of the most prominent politicians of the age, when the average American felt “four-hundred-percent bigger” than the year before.

described the lush land of the Texas coast as “waiting to be tickled into a laughing harvest.” The railroad come-ons painted Texas as a paradise of benign weather, when in fact hurricanes scoured its coast, plumes of hot wind baked apples in its trees, and “blue northers” could drop the temperature fifty degrees in a matter of minutes.

The bureau had long banned the use of the word tornado because it induced panic, and panic brought criticism, something the bureau could ill afford. Earlier that week, Moore had sent Galveston a telegram asserting yet again that only headquarters could issue storm warnings.

John W. Thomason Jr.—later to become a well-known writer of military history—arrived

Galveston in 1900 stood on the verge of greatness. If things continued as they were, Galveston soon would achieve the stature of New Orleans, Baltimore, or San Francisco. The New York Herald had already dubbed the city the New York of the Gulf.

on the Texas coast for one great city, and that they were in a winner-take-all race against Houston,

Within the next twenty-four hours, eight thousand men, women, and children in the city of Galveston would lose their lives. The city itself would lose its future. Isaac would suffer an unbearable loss. And he would wonder always if some of the blame did not belong to him. This is the story of Isaac and his time in America, the last turning of the centuries, when the hubris of men led them to believe they could disregard even nature itself.

Bubonic plague turned up in London and Glasgow. William Jennings Bryan stumped for the presidency and railed at America’s new imperialist bent,

THE HEART OF the weather service, and the thing that had to exist before there could even be such a service, was the telegraph.

The nearest town was San Angelo, whose residents described the place as hell on wheels. Hazen directed Isaac to travel by rail to Abilene, Texas,

It did exist, the railroad agent assured him. It was just too new to be on any map. A cattle boom had created the town overnight.

He had grown accustomed to the stark greens and grays of the sagescape that surrounded Abilene.

Even something as basic as predicting the temperature twenty-four hours in advance was considered so likely to result in failure and public ridicule that the bureau forbade it. This prohibition frustrated Isaac Cline.

The system, he told Congress, helped explain why Weather Bureau employees had to be committed to insane asylums more often than employees of any other federal agency.

The storm caused such thorough destruction, and killed so many residents, the survivors abandoned the town forever.

the incoming water would spread first over the vast lowlands behind Galveston, on the Texas mainland north of the bay where the land was even closer to sea level.

“The water was so high, we just sat in it, the horse was up to his neck in water.”