There have been countless natural disasters of various sorts world wide throughout history. All have changed the lives of the people who victim and survived or didn’t. It is hard to tell all of them unless you individually learn of them through personal accounts and such. Really it’s the major ones that must be paid taken into myth. So what are the most historical natural disasters involving flood, hurricane, typhoon, and/or tornado that have devastated North America? I will discuss the 1900 Hurricane of Galveston, Texas, the Tri-state Tornado of 1925, the Lake Okeechobee hurricane and flood of 1928, the Florida Keys hurricane of 1935, the 1930’s Dust Bowl, New England’s 1938 hurricane, El Nino, Hurricane Andrew (1992), the 1993 Midwest Expansive Flood, and the Oklahoma and Kansas tornado Outbreak of 1999. Yes, there were others and this article covers many storms but I figure this distinguished is enough. I will also name disasters that happened elsewhere globally for everyone interest.
Galveston Hurricane of 1900
It was September 4th, and at the US Weather Bureau of Galveston when warnings were notified by D.C.’s office stating that a tropical storm had moved north of Cuba. The future path of the storm was yet to be certain.
Conditions were excellent enough in the Gulf of Mexico to strengthen such a storm to come. For weeks not much cloud cover had been reported and water was warm. Ingredients to create a hurricane out of a tropical storm within days. Greater strength was likely if it moved through and past the Gulf.
Sept. 6th, the storm was North of the Key West and in the earliest hours the next day New Orleans issued a relate of enormous damage on the coasts of Louisiana and Mississippi. Storm details were only communicated by telegraph. It was the Central Offices of the Weather Bureau in D.C. that ordered storm warnings from Pensacola, Florida to Galveston, Texas. By the afternoon, large swells of the SE were distinguished, and the clouds on all altitudes had moved NE meaning a hurricane was due to appear in the East. Double square flags were raised in Galveston to signal hurricane warning. Then at 1 pm the ship Louisiana encountered the storm departing New Orleans. Wind speeds then were 150 mph. Debates were thrown as to what direction the storm would take.
Swells continued the next day with partly cloudy skies. An indefinite but relatively small number of people took to the warnings. They were told to evacuate across the bridges to the mainland, but few listened. Rain clouds rolled in by mid0morning. Even Isaac Cline walked along the beach to tell everyone he met about the approaching storm. But only he accounted that story which is still controversial as to whether or not he did this with the permission of the Bureau. Oddly, earlier he had claimed the storm would never happen.
The landfall occurred September 8th winds of 135 mph making it a category 4. It caused up to 1,200 deaths. The third highest number of casualties in Atlantic hurricanes. Coming in second is the Great Hurricane of 1,780 and in first, Hurricane Mitch, 1998. Since 1900 no other hurricane has been by dissimilarity deadlier. In fact the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane caused 2500. This storm has no official names. Hurricane Katrina caused 1,600 deaths. The 1900 hurricane cost $483 million. The areas it affected were Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Haiti, Mississippi, Galveston, Texas, central America, the Great Lakes region and Atlantic Canada.
In the early afternoon a steady NE wind picked up and by five, hurricane force winds were recorded, The wind shifted east then SE as the eye of the hurricane passed over the island. The highest measured wind speed was 100 mph after sic. Then anemometer was blown off after that. The eye passed at eight with winds at 120 mph.
At the time of the storm, Galveston’s highest point was 8.7 feet above sea level. So not high up there (I have lived there and it still isn’t that high). Being that the storm surge coming was 15 feet it’s a no brainer that everything was washed. Knocking buildings off there foundations, pounding the surf to oblivion. Destroying 3,600 plus homes, filling the ocean with debris. For the buildings that survived they were solidly built mansions and houses on the Strand District. Today’s tourist attraction, and a suggestible area may I add, to visit.
Human cost was horrific. With the ruined bridges and telegraph lines no word of how destructive the Strom had been could be reached on the mainland. Not until 11 am the next day. Burial wasn’t an option for the victims because there were so many. Instead they were dumped at sea only to be washed back on to shore. Then the exhaust of funeral pyres (burnings) came up as the only option and it lasted for weeks. Free whiskey was passed out to work crews because many of them had to throw family members, particularly there wives and children, on the burn piles. That couldn’t have been easy for anyone.
The Tri-State Tornado
The tornado happened on Wednesday, march 18, 1925. It had been of a larger tornado outbreak of sibling tornados in Tennessee, Kentucky, Indiana, Alabama and Kansas. It came in though southern Illinois and SW Indiana. For the time period it was the deadliest tornado in US History with 695 confirmed deaths and 2,298 injured persons. It left an ongoing track measuring 219 miles long. The longest ever recorded in the world. This tornado is an example of an F% on the Fujita Scale. There has been discussion of whether the event was a single continuos tornado or a tornado family.
In Missouri the tornados vortex was seen around 1:01 pm in the direction NNW of Elington. It sped NW killing two and doing $500 thousand in wound to property near Annapolis then striking Leadanna. Thirty-two children were injured in two schools that were hit and damaged in Bollinger County. Also hit were Redford, Cornwall, Biehle, and Frohna. Eleven died.
When the tornado came to southern Illinois by the Mississippi River, it hit the town of Gorham at 2:30 pm and demolished it. Killing 34 people. It continued NE at a speed of 62 mph, sometimes 73 mph. Cutting a one mile path through Murphysboro, de Soto, Hurst-Bush, and West Frankfort. And in forty minutes, 541 lives were lost with 1,423 seriously injured. Parrish was destroyed and in it twenty-two people. Murphysboro had 234 deaths, making it the single most deaths in a city in US history. Hamilton and White Counties together had 65 deaths.
Indiana was greeted by the tornado when it crossed the Wabash River and hit and almost obliterated the town of Griffin and the surrounding rural areas. After impacting Owensville, it reared to Princeton leaving it in half. Ten miles later in the NW it vanished. Four thirty pm, three miles SW of Petersburg and only sacrificing seventy on citizens.
All in all 696 died, 2,027 injured. Most in southern Illinois. With the nineteen communities beared upon several never recovered. Damage was worth $16.5 million. The tornado was joined by heavy down burst winds in the majority of its life which increased its width to three-forths of a mile and then sometimes to three miles. In the wake of devastation, thousands were left homeless and /or without food. Looting and theft were common in matters of the recently deceased’s possessions.
Labor Day Hurricane 1935
A very intense hurricane of August 1935 that today remains the strongest hurricane on US record. And for the last five decades was the strongest Atlantic Hurricane and now ranks third in lowest central pressure.
It was born as a small tropical disturbance due east of Florida near the Bahamas in late August then it drifted west and strengthened on September 1st to a category 1 and neared south Andros Island. Later crossing the south of the island and continued and intensified.
As it entered the Gulf Stream late September 1st, the intensity sustained itself for one and a half days and then turned NW to Islamoroda reaching peak intensity the next day. From then on making it’s way to landfall between 8:30 am and 9:30 pm EST at Craig Key.
After the Bahamas, it landed in the southern Florida Keys on Labor Day (September 2nd, 1935) as a category 5 with maximum wind speed 160mph-185mph. Devastating the middle and upper connections to the mainland and killing over 400 people. It continued up Florida’s’ west cost to make a second landfall in the panhandle’s center. Passing above Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and returning there as an extra tropical storm to southern Greenland, September 10th.
The impact that the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935 had on Civilians on a 10-car evacuation train was washed off track. The initial expend of the train was to rescue a group of WW1 veterans who, in part of a government relief program, were building a new road bridge in the upper Keys. Only they never were rescued due to the engineers misjudgement to back the train down a single track line. He was unable to reach the veteran. Surprisingly, after the storm, the locomotive remained upright and on the rails. It was sent back to Miami months later.
Labor Day Hurricane, too, left a path that almost destroyed the upper Keys. Primarily in the location of today’s Islamoroda.
The recognize of the storm was eight miles in width with its worst winds 15 miles of the eye. One-hundred twenty-five miles of a chain of islands south of Miami were untouched with minor harm to the lower and far upper Keys. Craig Key, Long Key, and upper and lower Matecumbe suffered the worst.
On the third day since the storms wrath, corpses’ that were later found (beware those reading) had swelled and split open in the heat. Plain wood coffins holding the bursting bodies were stacked and burned in several locations. Other than that, the Coast Guard organized evacuation and relief efforts. Boats and airplanes carried away surviving to Miami. The railroad was never rebuilt.
For the death that the storm caused, 423 people were killed. That’s one-hundred four residents and 259 veterans who were employed to the road project. They were recovered as far as Flamingo and Cape Sable. Miraculously three hundred fifty of those veterans who lived in the Keys (work camps to be real) survived the storm by attending a baseball game.
The storm additionally caused wind and flood damage along the panhandle and the border of Georgia.
Dust Bowl-1930’s
Many don’t know what the dust bowl was. In fact I didn’t know worthy of it other than it caused a gigantic migration of people to the west.
What it was, was a series of catastrophic dust storms. They caused ecological and agricultural damage to both American and Canadian prairie. Which worsened because of decades of farming that changed frequently in techniques causing erosion. This ended in combination with drought becoming dust that was blown east in massive dark black clouds. Some of which found its draw to Chicago. The majority of it was lost to the Atlantic. All of this caused an exodus extending from Texas, Arkansas, Oklahoma, and the Grand Plains. Five hundred thousand were left homeless (PBS). This is where migration took place. The people left had to look for work and the Canadians affected went to Toronto. Two-thirds of them, farmers of the Saskatchewan, relied on government aid (CBC). Other victims came to illness and death from dust pneumonia and malnutrition.
I want to define on the farming effects on the Dust Bowl. The agricultural market was unstable in that decade. Mostly from WW1’s following of overproduction. The war had essentially caused farmers to extend the national limitation on the agricultural frontier.
In addition to the dust storms, it was November 11, 1933 that an especially strong dust storm occurred. Ridding of the topsoil of South Dakota farmlands. May 11, 1934 has the beginning of a two-day dust storm that removed large amounts of topsoil from the Substantial Plains. It was the worst of the dust storms. The dust clouds that reached Chicago dumped four pounds of debris per person. The storm reached cities in the east. Including Buffalo, Boston, Original York City, and a Washington D.C. During the winter, red snow fell over Modern England.
April 14, 1935 was known as “Dusky Sunday”. In it was the worst “Black Blizzard” to occur during the Dust Bowl.
New England’s Hurricane of 1938
This was the first major hurricane to hit Novel England since 1869. It had formed near Africa in September and became a Category 5 before it made landfall as a category 3 on Long Island on September 21st, killing 500-600 people. What was recent about this storm was it’s forward speed of 70 mph that let it travel far north before it has a chance to weaken.
Landfall was in Suffolk County Long Island, New York on September 21, 1938 as a category 3 (present day).
The storm traveled across the Long Island Sound, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, and into Canada and continuing at an unusually high bustle.
In Long Island the storm struck at about 3:30 pm, a few hours before high tide. The eye was about 50 miles across and the hurricane itself was 500 miles in diameter.
For Fresh York, Dune Road was finite in the area of Westhampton Beach, resulting in 29 deaths. Notauk was briefly an island unto itself when the storm flooded the South Fork at Napeague and the tracks of the Long Island Rail Road. None the less sand in the Cedar Point Lighthouse was rearranged to connecting the island to today’s Cedar Point County Park and created the Shinnecock Inlet. Sadly the landmark steeple of Sag Harbor was toppled and never rebuilt.
Rhode Island was hit westerly at 3:30 pm EDT giving one-hundred deaths. The tide was higher then normal due to fact that it was the Autumnal Equinox and a fresh moon. The tides were made higher by the storm. Reaching 14-18 feet for most of Long Island and Connecticut. Eighteen to twenty-five foot tides in New England to East Cape Cod. The storm surge was particularly violent, driving northward through Narragansett Bay creating a 13 foot flood of the downtown Providence. Several motorists drowned while quiet in their vehicles.
The only structures along the soar surviving the storm were large stone Mansions in Original Port. The Breakers and Carey Mansion to name a few, collected bearing scars.
Summary of the destruction and death toll comes to this: 600 people insensible in New England, most in Rhode Island. One hundred people elsewhere with 708 injured. There were 4,500 cottages, farms, and other homes destroyed and 20,000 electrical poles topples. Forests included majority of harm was caused by storm surge and wind damage. Hurricanes can sometimes reek freshwater flooding which this one id not, for it wasn’t in any one place for long.
New Hampshire received minor damage. One inch of rain in Concord. Petersburg though had costly wreckage and the flushed bridges. Thirteen people died.
El Nino-Southern Oscillation
What El Nino is constitutes as a sizable scale climatic flucuation of the Pacific. It has a warm sur unique around Christmas time off Ecuador and Peru. Disappearing around March. Even two to seven years it hangs around for eighteen months. Making the El Nino Southern Oscillation, the initiation of it is unknown. Though pressure changes play a big allotment of it. Yet in an ENSO strong easterly winds are weakened at the equatorial Pacific. Letting warm waters rise. Temperature increases 2-3.5 degrees F along the W. Cruise of South America. The warmth of the water deepens and cold, up welling, nutrient-rich waters never reach the surface. So, basically warm and terrible in nutrient water emerge, hurting fisheries. The South American coast in turn has heavy rain as well as we get warmer in temperature along our Pacific Glide and have increased rainfall in the Gulf Luckily we get weaker hurricanes.
In severe circumstances the whole world can be affected. There have been 29 of these that we know of between 1700 and 1999. The worst being the 1982-83 El Nino. Then, Africa suffered a drought and California had storms. Thirteen hundred to two thousand lives were taken.
Hurricane Andrew
Now, the next hurricane I shall discuss is a dozy in topic, Hurricane Andrew . The second most destructive hurricane to hit the US. And the last of three category 5 hurricanes in the 20th century. It remained the most devastating natural disasters in US history until Hurricane Katrina. The name Andrew has not been used since spring of 1993. Alex took its place.
The worst damage high-intensify storms has been thought to occurred from vortices (miniwhirls). There were thousands of these in hurricane Andrew. Many traced for miles as they destroyed every building in theirs paths.
Andrew began as a modest wave off the west skim of Africa on August 14. Passing the southern Cape Verde islands. Spawning a tropical depression on the sixteenth and the next day became hurricane Andrew. It developed slowly. Nearly diminishing on the twentieth from wind shear. By the twenty-first the hurricane was half way between. Bermuda and Puerto Rico when it turned to more splendid environment raising to a category 5 the next day. With winds 175 mph and pressure of 922 mbar. Yes, the storm was puny. Gale force winds extending ninety miles from the centers. So,, 180 miles in diameter, I believe.
Before any occurrence of the storm came to the Bahamas there was a predicted storm surge of 18 to 30 feet and 5 to 8 inches of rain. So evacuations were in order at 5 pm for residents of the Bahamas and Florida. They were also pre-cautioned tp protect life and property. Some individual tornados were thought to possibly hit south and central Florida on August 23rd and 24th.
Fifteen hundred National Guard troops were sent to Florida to fight looting.
Sandbag walls were set up in the south Bell Telephone Building of New Orleans and in the French Quarter the New Orleans levees and floodgates were closed and no sandbags for the public were available. New arial flights were to depart or arrive in New Orleans.
Landfall happened twice in the Bahamas. Sustaining 150 mph winds. Weakening after the second landfall with maintained winds but with rising pressure. It briefly regained its status as a category 5 in its next landfall over south Florida on August 24 with 165 mph winds.
On westward to the Gulf of Mexico it was a category 4 then went north bringing the storm to the central Louisiana coast on August 26 as a category 3 with 115 mph winds. NE bound, it merged with a frontal system over the mid-Atlantic states on the 28th.
Andrew’s winds weren’t measured in south Florida due to destruction and/or failure of measuring instruments. The last transmission of 8 microscopic average of 142 mph with a peak of 169 mph winds was from the Coastal Marine Automated Network station at Fowry Rocks. In another report the official weather observer noted that the wind urge was estimated to be 125 mph at 4:45 a, EDT and remained at that speed for 3-5 minutes before the anemometer failed. Of course a 2002 ongoing review of historical hurricane records showed that Andrew sustained a wind speed of 165 during landfall.
Andrew produced a 7 foot storm surge near the landfall in Florida with storm tides of eight feet on the Louisiana waft. Also a killer storm occurred in SE Louisiana as Laplace was hit with an F5 tornado that grounded until it reached Reserve, St. John. The majority of damage was cause of winds. An indicator of this is the power lines brought down in the Keys. Water was maintained but boiled.
After moving across the Gulf SC Louisiana was again hit by the storm. Knocking out 152,000 customers electricity and destroying soy bean, corn, and sugar cane crops.
A Cruise Guard helicopter rescued four people and two dogs from a disabled 65 foot fishing boat.
Pain tom marine life was minimal. Oxygen was diminished in the water. This, not including the 182 million fish killed in the basin by the storm.
The hurricane wrecked eighty percent of the trees and killed 9.4 million fish. Sixty0two thousand people were housed in shelters and the Salvation Army supplied 37 mobile food storage faculties, serving 40,000 meals. Federal aid sent four 750,000 kilowatt generators, 2,500 cots, and 30,000 MRE’s (pre-packaged meals). And 1,279 National Gaud troops were deployed. Not surprisingly enough alcohol sales were banned after the storm.
Hurricane Andrews catastrophic destructive sprung gossip that hundreds to thousands of migrant farm workers were killed and that their deaths were not reported. The Miami Herald found no basis for such claims.
There was a slow response of Federal Aid to victims in south Florida. Kate Hale, Dade country’s emergency management director famously exclaimed, “Where the hell is the calvary on this on? They keep saying we’re going to get supplies. For God’s sake, where are they? ” Then mobile kitchens and tents rolled in sometime after that, as George H.W. Bush said. Insurance claims ended in bankruptcy and draining closure of eleven insurance agencies and draining equity excessively from thirty others. One million residents were not eligible for coverage. Florida legislature then setup new agencies.
The Great Flood of 1993
This flood happened along the Mississippi and Missouri River’s and their tributaries during the months of April through October. The weather brought abnormally heavy precipitation at the beginning of the year. This was they antagonist to the excess cloud condensation from earth-circling ash cloud produced by the massive eruption of the Phillippines volcano Mount Pintabo (1991). The autumn had much rain and soil moisture was above average. The reservoir levels of the Missouri and Upper Mississippi River. The region experienced heavy snowfall during the winter of 1992-1993. Trailing behind was the spring weather patterns that produced repetitive storms. Forty-eight inches of rainfall in East Central Iowa during April 1st to August 31st. The central northern plains got 400-750 percent more rain.
To give you more of an idea of the floods wreckage I’ll start in April when the Mississippi River crested 6 to 10 feet above flood stage, it later did in May as well. In June they dropped below flood stage and continued to recede. But during the second week of June, they rose again and receded back slowly. By the end of June the Mississippi was four feet below flood stage at St. Louis while other areas were near flooding. Rain was one inch over in Kansas City and four inches over in Springfield.
The only event of May was that the Redwood River of Minnesota had severe flooding.
Flooding came of the Black River in Wisconsin in June. And of the Mississippi, Missouri, and Kansas Rivers.
July had even more rain in Missouri and Mississippi River regions in Missouri, Iowa, Kansas, Nebraska, North and South Dakota, Illinois, and Minnesota. Rainfall was 5 to 7 inches in 24 hours. Making the months total rainfall one inch over in St. Louis and Springfield and up to seven inches over in Columbia and Kansas City. The river gauges malfunctioned because of this. From July 11 t the 22, the Des Moines, Iowa water threatened facility was flooded having the plant to be shut down for the entire eleven days. When it was restored there was enough water pressure to bathe and flush toilets. Usage restrictions were lifted in August.
The Mississippi River stalled for a few days while waiting for the Missouri River to arrive so they could raise levels back to normal. This broke levees and drove people to higher grounds. Minor flooding occurred below the Ohio. From the Eastern US coincidal drought.
Sandbagging took space in the lower Missouri river, the River des Peres in St. Louis, and the Mississippi River south of St. Louis. Some efforts were successful.
Over 1,000 flood warnings were issued in St. Louis, two river levels were 20 feet over. It hadn’t been that high in over 150 years. The fifty-two feet flood wall barely held the 1,844 volume flood. Only two feet spared.
On August1st, levee breaks near Columbia, Illinois flooded 47,000 acres of land. The water ran parallel to the river. August 3rd was when the Corps of Engineers made the decision to break through the Mississippi Levee to put more water back in the river. All historical areas were saved. Prairie de Rocher and Fort de Chatres.
The Missouri River had all 700 privately built levees toppled and the Mississippi River at St. Louis crested 49.6 feet on August 1st with a trot rate of over one million feet squared per second. The Busch Stadium could be filled with as powerful water in 69 seconds.
Some locations flooded for 200 days, others for 100 days. Some flood stages lowered by October 7th. Ten acres of farmland and towns of Valmeyer, Illinois and Rhineland, Missouri, which were relocated. Twenty-eight lives were lost. More like fifty people though.
The Oklahoma Tornado Outbreak of 1999
Finally we come to the last tornado and storm I shall discuss, This tornado lasted three days, May 3rd to May 6th., Tornados sprang out in states of Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas and Tennessee. Beginning in Oklahoma and Kansas.
The more mountainous tornado touched down just south west of Amber, Oklahoma then went NE after a tornado that passed over Chicksasha. The storm proceeded to Bridge Creek.
In how it all began, you couldn’t be more deceive by the first part of the days outbreak. Sunny, warm, and humid. But by late afternoon forecast began to indicate widespread and severe weather. Three pm, parts of Oklahoma and Kansas were out at high risk. The SPC issued a tornado watch by mid-afternoon. Dark skies took over and by mid-evening tornados broke out
May 3rd’s contained 66 individual tornados. The most prominent tornado hit Chickasha in Oklahoma than became a F5 before going to Midwest City and disappearing. Forty-eight people fell victim.
On the storm went, crossing the Canadian River to far southern Oklahoma City with winds of 301 mph, give or take 20 mph, that occurred above ground. The winds beneath weren’t as intense. The city of Moore was hit next. Then Oklahoma was hit thereafter, Del City, Tinker Air Force Unsuitable, then disintegrating reach the intersection of Reno Avenue and Woodcrest Drive. Thirty-six people were killed, 10,500 buildings destroyed. Three of the deaths reported were people who took refuge under neath overpasses in the Moore-Bridge Creek F5 tornado. Two additional overpass deaths were in Oklahoma City during the most violent of the tornados.
Other world renowned storms that I could discuss, but do not have enough words for are:
The Sahel Drought in Africa (1910-1914, 1940-1944, 1970-1985)
Again Drought in India (1900, 1907, 1965-67) in China (1907, 1928-30, 1936, 1941-42) in the Soviet Union (1921-22)
The China Typhoons (1912, 1922)
Yangtze River Flood of China 1931
Smog Of London 1952
Europe Strom Surge 1953
Great Iran Flood 1954
Typhoon Vera in Japan 1958
Bangladesh Cyclone 1920
North Vietnam Flood 1971
Iran Blizzard 1972
Typhoon Thelma in the Philippines 1991
Bangladesh Cyclone 1991
Hurricane Mitch 1998
So, for those who’ve been victim to Katrina and the Philippines and other recently devastating storms, lets give them the help they deserve. For these storms are an example that it effects everyone.