![]() ![]() Galvestonians had been aware of the storm since 4 September when it was reported moving northward over Cuba. This hurricane had been first observed on 30 August in the vicinity of 15°N latitude and 63°W longitude, about 125 miles (201 km) northwest of Martinique, proceeding westward. The 16 ships anchored in the harbor at the time of the storm also suffered extensive damage ( Weems 2009). Property damage caused by the 1900 hurricane is difficult to estimate by current standards, but contemporary figures range from $20 million to $30 million 2,636 houses were destroyed, and 300 feet (91 m) of shoreline eroded. For comparison, Hurricane Katrina (2005), the deadliest storm of recent times, claimed the lives of approximately 1,500 people ( Blake et al. ![]() Estimated casualties for the entire island range from 10,000 to 12,000. ![]() The hurricane occurred before the implementation of assigning official names to tropical storms, and thus it is commonly referred to by a variety of descriptive names: “Galveston Hurricane of 1900,” the “Great Galveston Hurricane,” and, especially in older documents, the “Galveston Flood.” However, for Galveston locals, even today, reference to “the storm” always means the hurricane that tore across Galveston on 8 September 1900 and left the city in ruins ( Lutz 2010).īetween 6,000 and 8,000 people in the city died as a result of the storm. At the time, the highest elevation on Galveston Island was 8.7 feet (2.7 m) ( City of Galveston 1900 Storm Committee 2010). The storm surge, estimated at 15.7 feet (4.8 m), swept ashore in advance of the hurricane’s vortex and caused a sudden rise in water depth, inundating most of Galveston Island and the City of Galveston. Later, meteorologists estimated that wind speeds probably reached 140 miles per hour (225 kph) ( City of Galveston 1900 Storm Committee 2010). The storm’s sustained wind velocity, which was registered before the anemometer blew away, was 84 miles per hour (135 kph), but gusts of 100 miles per hour (161 kph) had been recorded. Although the “Great Galveston Hurricane” also occurred before the establishment of the Saffir-Simpson hurricane scale, this estimated category 4 storm is still considered the United States’ deadliest natural disaster. Although predating the establishment of national parks in Texas, the hurricane that made landfall at Galveston, Texas, in 1900, was in the vicinity of what is now Padre Island National Seashore (authorized in 1962). Indeed the seascapes themselves are geologically youthful (i.e., covered by Pleistocene and Holocene landforms). The town of Galveston, Texas, destroyed by the Galveston Hurricane of 1900.Įstablished in the 1960s and 1970s, all of the National Park System units on the coast of Texas are young. ![]()
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