The 1900 Galveston Hurricane | An Absurd Delusion
4/8/202634 min
At the turn of the 20th century, a booming cotton trade had made the Gulf Coast city of Galveston, Texas an economic powerhouse. Located just a few feet above sea level on a narrow barrier island, it was prone to flooding. But in a time before sophisticated weather forecasting, residents failed to grasp the danger lurking in their midst.
In early September 1900, as a tropical storm gathered strength in the Caribbean Sea, Cuban forecasters warned that a powerful hurricane was charging toward Texas. But in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War, U.S. Weather Bureau officials had...
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First 90 secondsLindsey Graham· Host0:00
Audible subscribers can listen to all episodes of American History Tellers ad-free right now. Join Audible today by downloading the Audible app. [drum roll] [footsteps] Imagine it's dawn on September sixth, nineteen hundred. You step out onto the roof of the Belen Meteorological Observatory in Havana, Cuba, where you work as an assistant weather observer. You find your boss, Father Lorenzo Gongora, in his black priest robes, staring up the sky. You hand him a cup of coffee, and he nods his appreciation before returning his gaze to the red morning clouds, his face etched with worry. "What's wrong, Father?" "Have you ever seen such a deep red color in the sky?" "I suppose not." "Those feathery cirrus clouds, tell me, what direction are they moving?" You take a moment to orient yourself and train your focus on the slow-moving, wispy clouds that resemble horsetails. "It looks to me like they're headed northwest." Father Gongora nods, his mouth set in a grim line. "This is the same system that pummeled Cuba over the past week, only now it's grown stronger." He sets his coffee on the parapets and pulls a small map out of his robes. You look over his shoulder as he traces his finger across the Gulf of Mexico from the Florida Straits to the upper coast of Texas. "The US Weather Bureau is saying this is an ordinary storm traveling northeast up the Atlantic coast. But everything I know about storms is telling me that's wrong. It's a hurricane,