At the dawn of the twentieth century, a great confidence
suffused America. Isaac Cline was one of the era''s new men, a
scientist who believed he knew all there was to know about the
motion of clouds and the behavior of storms. The idea that a
hurricane could damage the city of Galveston, Texas, where he was
based, was to him preposterous, "an absurd delusion." It was 1900,
a year when America felt bigger and stronger than ever before.
Nothing in nature could hobble the gleaming city of Galveston, then
a magical place that seemed destined to become the New York of the
Gulf.
That August, a strange, prolonged heat wave gripped the nation
and killed scores of people in New York and Chicago. Odd things
seemed to happen everywhere: A plague of crickets engulfed Waco.
The Bering Glacier began to shrink. Rain fell on Galveston with
greater intensity than anyone could remember. Far away, in Africa,
immense thunderstorms blossomed over the city of Dakar, and great
currents of wind converged. A wave of atmospheric turbulence
slipped from the coast of western Africa. Most such waves faded
quickly. This one did not.
In Cuba, America''s overconfidence was made all too obvious by the
Weather Bureau''s obsession with controlling hurricane forecasts,
even though Cuba''s indigenous weathermen had pioneered hurricane
science. As the bureau''s forecasters assured the nation that all
was calm in the Caribbean, Cuba''s own weathermen fretted about
ominous signs in the sky. A curious stillness gripped Antigua. Only
a few unlucky sea captains discovered that the storm had achieved
an intensity no man alive had ever experienced.
In Galveston, reassured by Cline''s belief that no hurricane could
seriously damage the city, there was celebration. Children played
in the rising water. Hundreds of people gathered at the beach to
marvel at the fantastically tall waves and gorgeous pink sky, until
the surf began ripping the city''s beloved beachfront apart. Within
the next few hours Galveston would endure a hurricane that to this
day remains the nation''s deadliest natural disaster. In Galveston
alone at least 6,000 people, possibly as many as 10,000, would lose
their lives, a number far greater than the combined death toll of
the Johnstown Flood and 1906 San Francisco Earthquake.
And Isaac Cline would experience his own unbearable loss.
Meticulously researched and vividly written, Isaac''s Storm is
based on Cline''s own letters, telegrams, and reports, the testimony
of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the hows
and whys of great storms. Ultimately, however, it is the story of
what can happen when human arrogance meets nature''s last great
uncontrollable force. As such, Isaac''s Storm carries a warning for
our time.
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