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    Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
    Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
    Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History
    Ebook377 pages5 hours

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

    By Erik Larson

    4/5

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    About this ebook

    NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The riveting true story of the Galveston hurricane of 1900, still the deadliest natural disaster in American history—from the acclaimed author of The Devil in the White City

    “A gripping account ... fascinating to its core, and all the more compelling for being true.” —The New York Times Book Review

    September 8, 1900, began innocently in the seaside town of Galveston, Texas. Even Isaac Cline, resident meteorologist for the U.S. Weather Bureau failed to grasp the true meaning of the strange deep-sea swells and peculiar winds that greeted the city that morning. Mere hours later, Galveston found itself submerged in a monster hurricane that completely destroyed the town and killed over six thousand people—and Isaac Cline found himself the victim of a devastating personal tragedy.

    Using Cline's own telegrams, letters, and reports, the testimony of scores of survivors, and our latest understanding of the science of hurricanes, Erik Larson builds a chronicle of one man's heroic struggle and fatal miscalculation in the face of a storm of unimaginable magnitude.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKnopf Doubleday Publishing Group
    Release dateOct 19, 2011
    ISBN9780307874092
    Author

    Erik Larson

    Erik Larson is an author of two previous books, including the critically acclaimed ‘Lethal Passage’, about a boy and a gun. Currently an award-winning writer for ‘Time’ magazine, he formerly wrote features stories for the front page of the ‘Wall Street Journal’ and taught non-fiction writing at the Johns Hopkins Writers’ Seminars and San Francisco State University. He lives in Seattle.

    Read more from Erik Larson

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    Reviews for Isaac's Storm

    4/5

    1,177 ratings80 reviews

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    • 3/5
      I dunno. I felt like there was something missing about this book, but I can't really put my finger on what it was.
    • 3/5
      Meticulously researched and documented, Larson produced a masterpiece. However, he possibly got carried away with the historical details of forecasting the weather. He also emphasized the political struggles within the weather bureau and the conflict between Isaac and his brother Joeseph. And, I feel that he left Galveston's recovery efforts much too soon.
    • 3/5
      Interesting story about Galveston hurricane in about 1900. Listened to it on audio tape.
    • 4/5
      Meticulously researched and compellingly told, this book is an account of the hurricane that hit Galveston, Texas in 1900. As a child, I lived in Houston and took short beach vacations to Galveston. I had heard about this tragedy, so I was interested to find out the details of how a disaster of such magnitude had occurred with so little warning. The author has a way to bring what could easily be dry material to life in an engaging manner. I learned about the history of the weather service and more about how hurricanes develop. I recommend this book to those interested in meteorology, natural disasters, history or anyone who lives in areas prone to hurricanes. Even though hurricane tracking and warnings have improved dramatically since 1900, there is still much more to be learned, as we unfortunately found out with Hurricane Katrina.
    • 4/5
      A bold story with horrific detail regarding the history of the weather bureau and the tools of the trade and how they relate to a devastating hurricane. Interesting, surprising, heart wrenching.
    • 4/5
      An account of the 1900 hurricane that devastated Galveston, Texas, with a particular focus on Isaac Cline, who was an officer of the US Weather Bureau in Galveston, and who lost his home and his wife in the storm.

      The second half of the book, describing the events of the storm and their aftermath, is pretty engaging, in a horrible and depressing sort of way. The first half, however, which has a lot to say about things like Cline's life, the state of weather forecasting at the time, the personalities of people in the Weather Bureau, and the growth of Galveston, is a lot more dry. (Horrible, tasteless pun very much not intended.) And Larson sometimes way overcompensates for this fact by over-writing in an attempt to make such things feel DRAMATIC and OMINOUS, an approach that backfires a bit for him, at least as far as I'm concerned.

      Still, there are a lot of interesting tidbits of information there. And there is a low-key but pervasive thread of commentary through the whole book about how the state of weather forecasting at the time was just good enough to foster overconfidence without being good enough to actually prevent this sort of horror, and about the ways in which ego and politics got in the way of acting properly on the information that was available. Although, since this book was published in 1999, the relevance of all of this to any 21st century hurricanes and other climate problems must remain as an exercise for the reader.
    • 5/5
       This was a reread during our recent trip to Galveston. It’s a wonderful example of nonfiction done well. As the timeline unfolds in the storm approaches we become invested in the real people navigating their days in the Texas port city. When the hurricane hits the loss of life and devastation are unfathomable. Highly recommended, especially if you were visiting Texas anytime soon!
    • 5/5
      Another Erik Larson gem. Larson always tells a story of tragedy, conflict, and often disaster and always through the lives of people who are like our friends and neighbors, or even ourselves. Larson’s writing is always top notch. His nonfiction books read like literature. “Isaac’s Storm” is a terrific read.
    • 5/5
      Hard to read at times but is very informative and well written.
    • 4/5
      An interesting scrupulously researched read, but in some ways less satisfying than other Larson books. He generally tells stories of events framed by personal stories of real people, but on this book I felt like the device did not work all that well. When the story returned to Isaac, it felt like I was suddenly reading another book. Also, Isaac (and Joseph, his brother,) just are not all that interesting, at least to me. I still enjoyed the book, learned a lot, and look forward to reading more Erik Larson.
    • 3/5
      I’ve read several of Erik Larson’s non-fiction works and have always found him to be educational and entertaining. This book, focuses on the Galveston hurricane of 1900, the largest natural disaster in American history, killing over 6,000 people. The book is told largely through the eyes of the National Weather Service station agent in Galveston at the time, Isaac Cline.

      As you can imagine, weather forecasting, at the turn of the 20th century, was in its infancy, especially as regards tropical storms and hurricanes. The 1900 Galveston hurricane hit a Texas coast that was completely unprepared, at least partially as a result of conflict between American and Cuban weather services.

      Unbeknownst to me, Galveston was one of the most prosperous cities in the United States at the time of the hurricane, eclipsing its next-door neighbor, Houston, as the port of choice for the region. The hurricane largely destroyed the city and allowed Houston to supplant Galveston for regional supremacy.

      The story has many interesting tidbits, not just as relates to Galveston and the hurricane, but also the formation and early operation of the National Weather Service and previous posting held by Cline.

      The book is rather short and contains a few silly exaggerations, such as claiming that Cline registered a temperature of 134 degrees one summer in Amarillo, and that a raging flood resulted from an upstream hailstorm in the same area, due solely from melting of the hail stones. It also claims storm surges of over 30 feet for the Galveston Hurricane, which certainly seems unlikely.

      All in all, a short entertaining read, but not exceptional.
    • 4/5
      The story of the 1900 Galveston Hurricane in which thousands perished. Interesting from the viewpoint of how little was known about hurricanes only 120 years ago. The author tried to get inside the "characters" with the limited information available and the results are mixed in their enhancement of the narrative. Overly, though, a fascinating read particularly for someone who lives so close to the area that was devastated by this storm.
    • 3/5
      In September of 1900, a devastating hurricane hit the gulf region of the United States. At least 6,000 (& possibly as many as 10,000) people lost their lives in Galveston, Texas. The hurricane, which was not named as hurricanes are today (it's more or less known as the Galveston hurricane of 1900), remains the worst natural disaster in U.S. history. Isaac Cline, of whom this book is named, was one of the leading meteorologists in the area, yet even he failed to acknowledge the danger that this weather event promised to bring.

      it's kind of by chance that I chose to pick up this book when I did, at a time of year when hurricanes and tropical storms are battering the south and east coasts of the U.S., including areas in Texas and specifically in the Galveston area yet again. I will once again admit my ignorance by stating that I had pretty much zero knowledge about Galveston and its catastrophic history prior to picking up this book. And so once again Erik Larson has enlightened me and provided me with an important history lesson. This is one of Larson's earlier books, and I didn't find it quite as engaging as some of his later ones, although this may or may not have been due to me listening to the abridged version of the audio book. It was still quite interesting, though, and his books always make me want to search YouTube for a documentary.
    • 3/5
      The storm was monumentally devastating...but it needn't have been. Eric Larson's account of the hurricane that devastated the offshore Texas town of Galveston is well done and quite readable. Like any drama, it is most appealing when the rubber hits the road, or in this case during the actual destruction of Galveston. Larson's recreations of the first person experiences of the storm are done in riveting fashion. Some of the images planted in my mind's eye will stay with me always. The blow by blow descriptions of the storm, the inhabitants of Galveston and the swirling water and debris wrench the heart. The storm is tracked across the Atlantic though when the technical structure of the storm is discussed, it bogged down the narrative. I became frustrated that I didn't understand the mechanics as well as I wanted to--a lot of information was crammed into a small space and not allowed to breath. The unfolding of the politics of weather forecasting, however, was done quite well. The mixture of insight and misinformation that informs any new field of knowledge contributed to American forecasters leaving Galveston unprepared. The title of the book refers to a regional weather man almost swallowed by the storm who should have known better but allowed his superiors to hold sway over his common sense. Exactly why it is considered his storm is only driven home at the end. What should have been a stronger central theme was played with but never driven home until the end of the book. There were some secondary characters introduced unnecessarily to heighten the tragedy of the storm--they diluted and confused the action. On the whole, quite enjoyable as history and mass tragedy but a misstep in really delivering the person of Isaac behind the title.
    • 4/5
      Not quite as good as some of Larson's other books -- he ventures a little far into the supposition category here, extrapolating from known facts. The basic idea I got from the book is that Cline's legend, about his warning of the great Galveston hurricane, doesn't square with the facts. But Larson does seem to play a little hide-the-ball with this. Not as recommended as some of Larson's other books.
    • 4/5
      Gripping true story of the worst natural disaster to hit the US. One of Laron's earlier books. Well researched, fast paced, excellently written.
    • 3/5
      As a child, I spent a family vacation in Galveston. I remember that there was a 17 foot sea well erected behind a barrier of granite boulders twenty-seven feet in width, which has been constructed early in the 20th century. The impetus for this project is the subject of this book. On Sept. 8, 1900, Galveston received a direct hit from a hurricane who was considered by many who experienced or witnessed its aftermath as supernatural in origin. Witnesses who received no warning to evacuate "stood at windows and watched the houses around...break up, wash away, and become battering rams to knock and tear others apart as they wee hurled and swept about." Informal estimates placed the death toll at 8-10,000, three times as many as perished in the Jamestown Flood. An early responder, Clara Barton, the founder of the American Red Cross, wired after viewing the number dead, injured or homeless: "Situation not exaggerated."

      Isaac Cline, employee of the recently established U.S. Weather Bureau was stationed in Galveston, believed that it would be safe for residents near the ocean to seek shelter in some of the sturdier constructed homes rather than evacuate. Although worsening conditions would contradict this recommendation, Isaac had support for his decision. A noted physical geographer reported that Galveston could not be destroyed by a tropical storm. Although pioneering hurricane weathermen in Cuba warned of a potential hurricane, this advice was ignored by Willis Moore, chief of the U.S. ather Bureau. U.S. forecasters "failed to identify the storm as a hurricane and to recognize that it was not following the rules."

      Although Erik Larson is a journalist and not a historian, I wish I had him as a history teacher. All his books tend to take a select few individuals and relates the details of the events they find themselves surrounded by. This particular book included a compilations of recollections of several survivors as the storm approaches and hits Galveston. My tension as these individuals related the events they experienced to the point that I am resolved to never fail to heed the recommendation of authority agencies to evacuate. I highly recommend this nonfiction account of one of the "most meteorological events in the world's history."
    • 5/5
      Erik Larson did a tremendous amount of research on this deadliest hurricane in Gaveston, Texas. Isaac Cline was sent t.o work at the Galveston Weather Station to be the chief meteorologist. Growing up in Tennessee on a farm with his younger brother, he got up at four in the morning to do the chores. He in the newspaper the Galveston was situated in a place where it would not have any severe storms.

      But he was too confident on September 8, 19oo,whem a horrific hurricane hit Galveston causing men, women, children and little babies perish, Isaac, himself lost beloved wife, Cora and nearly lost his youngest daughter.

      The coming of the storm came during a heat wave that covered most of the country. Then the rains came, up to 14 inches in one hour and sailors noticed strange green clouds.. Water began to flow into the streets. The women were worried but the men put down their concerns. Later corpses floated down the streets.

      Isaac searched and searched for his wife but only later found her ring.

      I have listened to the audio book of this non-fiction account, therefore there were no pictures, I cannot help but wonder if Isaac Cline carried with him the rest of his, much guilt for the huge loss of life and his own dear wife. The warnings and precautions that could have been taken but were not was very tragic.
    • 4/5
      Isaac Cline was a weatherman, a scientist, and part of the infant Weather Bureau, a federal agency organized to predict weather. Isaac was stationed in Galveston at a time Galveston was competing with Houston to become the top port on the Gulf Coast (and had a good chance of winning that competition). The common wisdom was that although Galveston was located on what was basically a sand bar and no part of it was much above sea level, it would be immune to destruction by the major storms we now know as hurricanes. In 1900, Isaac was one of those who believed that no hurricane could seriously damage Galveston.

      In fact, one did. To date this hurricane remains one of our deadliest natural disasters. More than 6000 people died (maybe as many as 10,000) and much of the city was destroyed. Larson describes people gathered in their houses helpless as winds blew out the windows, blew off the roofs, waves and the wind toppled houses off their foundations, tipping people into rising flood waters and waves in utter darkness, randomly to sink or swim--all making for compelling reading. There's lots of science here, and lots of human drama. Recommended.
    • 5/5
      Larson's recounting of the hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas in 1900 is as brilliant as it is horrifying, and in many ways. By blending research from a multitude of sources with a dual focus on the people of Galveston and the other factors that played into making the storm a surprise--from departmental politics to faulty understandings of hurricanes on to science and incorrect assumptions--Larson built a compelling work.

      In many ways, this is a horror story just so much as it is history or truth--so many things came together to make for this hurricane being the deadliest hurricane in US history. The idea that unknowns, natural forces, and human pride could come together in this fashion is terrifying in itself, but Larson puts so much work into bringing to life the faces and persons who were directly affected by this storm that the book takes on a larger and more human import. It reads like a novel, and yet it is built entirely of fact--fascinating, deadly facts.

      This isn't a book I'll soon forget, if ever, and it's certainly one I'd recommend, though it's not an easy read, the subject is so severe.
    • 3/5
      Okay. I liked it because it was informative. But I don't love it. Erik Larson does a decent job with this research. He blends history and science and tries to provide us all with some insight into Texas life prior to the hurricane and then delves into the wrath and aftermath of the storm. Having said all this, I just can't see myself picking up another Erik Larson book.

      If you have a deep love of science, climatology, or storms in general, you will get a pleasant thrill out of reading this book. As for me, I'll take this book back to the library and just get my own thrill by watching the storm-chasers in the movie "Twister."
    • 3/5
      I read this for my Eavesdropping Book Club. I'm not part of the actual group, but I work close enough to their monthly meetings that I hear spoilers. So I read along with their list as a form of defense.

      I have actually been intending to read this for a long time, as I have heard wonderful things about several of the author's books. The timing worked out well for reading this book at this time as far as irony. Several times in the course of mentioning how the hurricane of 1900 devastated Galveston, the author mentions how Houston was the main beneficiary of the destruction as it became Texas' main port. And now here we are nearing the first anniversary of Hurricane Harvey's devastation of Houston. While costly as hell, at least the number of lives lost was a mere fraction of the Galveston tragedy. I start to think maybe we have slowly learned something from Galveston (and Katrina and Sandy, etc.), but then I remember poor Puerto Rico...

      And while I did find the subject of the Galveston hurricane quite fascinating, I also found this to be one of those books that I could not read while lying down. I immediately fell asleep every time I tried.

      I was a bit troubled by how much stuff the author admitted to making up in the end notes, though I do admit his dramatization made for a good narrative. I just prefer my history to be factual.

      I still plan to read Larson's Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania, but knowing his style now, I'll go in expecting more docudrama than history and only read while walking or using my exercise machine.
    • 3/5
      A book club pick. Overall, this was a compelling read. I found the real-life history of Westerners encountering hurricanes fascinating, but the politics surrounding the Weather Bureau was a tad confusing, and sometimes I wasn't sure if the author was injecting his opinion into the text. The description of the hurricane itself, though, was vivid and absolutely terrifying. I got a real sense of what it must have been like to live through such an ordeal.
    • 3/5
      A very well researched account of a terrible disaster at the turn of the century. The first half of the book is basically a description on how hurricanes become hurricanes and how they eventually figure out how to track their course. The second half show you he destruction that the hurricane caused to the town of Galveston, Texas and the cities north that were also hit. The town of Galveston recovered but never came back to its former glory. Most interesting read.
    • 5/5
      Larsen, the author of The Devil in the White City, has a wonderful ability to pluck an event from the past and make it into compelling reading.

      This book covers the 1899 hurricane that struck Galveston, Texas with a resulting loss of at least 6,000 people. This remains the deadliest hurricane in United States history.

      There’s some tricky meteorology to deal with, but Larson explains it as simply as possible. He also clearly depicts the arrogance, pride, and stubbornness of men who are ingrained in the pride of their positions and terribly jealous of their prerogatives. That makes the book surprisingly contemporary in feel.

      The dread turning to fear and then to terror as the storm overtakes the city is chillingly absorbing. The mostly doomed attempts of the citizens to save themselves drives the reader to keep turning the pages.

      Another thing that makes the book such a great read is Larsen’s use of first-person narratives as sources. His thorough and patient research pays off.

      The only fault in the book is that the long-range aftermath feels a little rushed, or too short.

      Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      While I grew up in Texas, I don't remember studying Galveston's hurricane in any history class - I don't even remember hearing much about it until college, when our Symphonic Band played a piece that had been written to commemorate it's anniversary. That piece made me want to find out more about this event. Erik covers all the bases - meteorology, the creation of the Weather Bureau, the city, Isaac as well as many other survivors and victims of the storm. As his other books, Erik writes in a interesting narrative style that makes for a great read!
    • 5/5
      Read this in 2000, the 100th anniversary of the hurricane. An excellent read.
    • 3/5
      The only thing I knew about the Galveston hurricane of 1900 was the lyrics of a song on an old Tom Rush album. Larson filled out the details of the ignorance and almost delusional self-confidence that prevented anyone from issuing warnings to the people of Galveston about the hurricane which almost totally destroyed it and killed thousands of citizens and visitors. He also humanized the account by following the head of the Weather Service there, Isaac Cline, through the run up, the storm and its aftermath.
    • 5/5
      Interesting and well-told. A great account of a horrible event.
    • 4/5
      I picked this book up because I had heard about the Galveston flooding in a Geography class, and thought it would be interesting to learn more. I was right.
      Larson makes this book very readable by focusing on the human element, what was going on in the lives of the people involved. He also shows us how little was known about weather patterns, and gives us an insider's view of the political nature of the Weather Bureau--both of which hampered good weather forecasts. Isaac Cline, the head meteorologist in Galveston, is the main focus, but there are many other vignettes interspersed portraying the lives of local citizens. It was hard for me to keep track of who everyone was. For example, at the end when Judson Palmer's mental breakdown is presented sympathetically, I couldn't remember why his experience was any worse than anyone else's. I guess if I really wanted to know, I would have looked in the very thorough index to review him.
      The book has about 50 pages of reference notes of the original source material for most of the events (and even thoughts!) presented, a bibliography of source material, and, as mentioned, the index.
      While I don't expect to ever need to read this book again, I thought it was interesting enough to recommend it to friends interested in US History.

    Book preview

    Isaac's Storm - Erik Larson

    Acclaim for ERIK LARSON’s

    ISAAC’S STORM

    Masterful.…A thoroughly engrossing account of the catastophe.

    ——The News & Observer (Raleigh)

    A terrifying account of the storm’s wrath.

    —The Seattle Times/Post-Intelligencer

    Larson’s vivid detail and storytelling ability go beyond our fascination with bizarre weather and show how natural disasters can change the course of history.

    —The Hartford Courant

    "Richly imagined and prodigiously researched, [Isaac’s Storm] pulls readers into the eye of the hurricane." —

    —The New York Times

    This brilliant exploration of the hurricane’s deadly force is set against the human drama of Isaac Monroe Cline.… Long after you lift your eyes from the final page, this book will bring you back to its portraits of a city under siege, and the storm’s survivors and victims.

    —The Times-Picayune

    Drawing from public records and the personal accounts of survivors, Larson tracks in vivid detail both the path of the hurricane and the trajectory of Isaac Cline’s carrer.

    —The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

    Larson offers Dantesque images of trees, street lamps, houses and furnishings being turned into projectiles … of wind-whipped walls of water pressing the life out of entire city blocks.

    —The Plain Dealer

    In all the books about disasters, few have assembled so many nuanced details into the kind of flood that Larson releases when the storm surges.

    —San Francisco Chronicle

    Also by ERIK LARSON

    The Naked Consumer

    Lethal Passage

    ERIK LARSON

    ISAAC’S STORM

    Erik Larson, a contributor to Time magazine, is the author of The Naked Consumer and Lethal Passage. His work has appeared in The Atlantic Monthly, Harper’s, The New Yorker, and other national magazines. He lives in Seattle.

    FIRST VINTAGE BOOKS EDITION, JULY 2000

    Copyright © 1999 by Erik Larson

    Cover Design: Megan Wilson

    Cover photograph © Graham M. Lawrence/London News Pictures via ZUMA Wire

    Excerpt from In the Garden of Beasts copyright © 2011 by Erik Larson.

    All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto. Originally published in hardcover in the United States by Crown Publishers, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, in 1999.

    Vintage and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.

    The map on this page-this page is being used by courtesy of the Rosenberg Library, Galveston, Texas.

    The Library of Congress has cataloged the Crown edition as follows:

    Larson, Erik.

    Isaac’s storm : a man, a time, and the deadliest hurricane in history / Erik Larson.

    — 1st ed.

    p. cm.

    Based on the diaries of Isaac Monroe Cline and on contemporary accounts. 1. Galveston (Tex.)—History—20th century. 2. Hurricanes—Texas—Galveston—History—20th century. 3. Floods—Texas—Galveston—History—20th century. 4. Cline, Isaac Monroe. 5. Galveston (Tex.) Biography. I. Cline, Isaac Monroe. II. Title. F394.G2L37 1999

    976.4’139—dc21 99-25515

    eISBN: 978-0-307-87409-2

    Author photograph © Roseanne Olson

    www.vintagebooks.com

    rh_3.1_148356934_c0_r9

    For Chris, Kristen, Lauren, and Erin

    Contents

    Cover

    Other Books by This Author

    About the Author

    Title Page

    Copyright

    Dedication

    Atlantic Ocean Map

    Galveston Map

    The Beach: September 8, 1900

    I: The Law of Storms

    II: The Serpent’s Coil

    III: Spectacle

    IV: Cataclysm

    V: Strange News

    VI: Haunted

    Notes

    Sources

    Acknowledgments

    Excerpt from In the Garden of Beasts

    _148356934_

    TELEGRAM

    Washington, D.C.

    Sept. 9, 1900

    To: Manager, Western Union

    Houston, Texas

    Do you hear anything about Galveston?

    Willis L. Moore,

    Chief, U.S. Weather Bureau

    THE BEACH

    September 8, 1900

    THROUGHOUT THE NIGHT of Friday, September 7, 1900, Isaac Monroe Cline found himself waking to a persistent sense of something gone wrong. It was the kind of feeling parents often experienced and one that no doubt had come to him when each of his three daughters was a baby. Each would cry, of course, and often for astounding lengths of time, tearing a seam not just through the Cline house but also, in that day of open windows and unlocked doors, through the dew-sequined peace of his entire neighborhood. On some nights, however, the children cried only long enough to wake him, and he would lie there heart-struck, wondering what had brought him back to the world at such an unaccustomed hour. Tonight that feeling returned.

    Most other nights, Isaac slept soundly. He was a creature of the last turning of the centuries when sleep seemed to come more easily. Things were clear to him. He was loyal, a believer in dignity, honor, and effort. He taught Sunday school. He paid cash, a fact noted in a directory published by the Giles Mercantile Agency and meant to be held in strictest confidence. The small red book fit into a vest pocket and listed nearly all Galveston’s established citizens—its police officers, bankers, waiters, clerics, tobacconists, undertakers, tycoons, and shipping agents—and rated them for credit-worthiness, basing this appraisal on secret reports filed anonymously by friends and enemies. An asterisk beside a name meant trouble, Inquire at Office, and marred the fiscal reputations of such people as Joe Amando, tamale vendor; Noah Allen, attorney; Ida Cherry, widow; and August Rollfing, housepainter. Isaac Cline got the highest rating, a B, for Pays Well, Worthy of Credit. In November of 1893, two years after Isaac arrived in Galveston to open the Texas Section of the new U.S. Weather Bureau, a government inspector wrote: I suppose there is not a man in the Service on Station Duty who does more real work than he.… He takes a remarkable degree of interest in his work, and has a great pride in making his station one of the best and most important in the country, as it is now.

    Upon first meeting Isaac, men found him to be modest and self-effacing, but those who came to know him well saw a hardness and confidence that verged on conceit. A New Orleans photographer captured this aspect in a photograph that is so good, with so much attention to the geometries of composition and light, it could be a portrait in oil. The background is black; Isaac’s suit is black. His shirt is the color of bleached bone. He has a mustache and goatee and wears a straw hat, not the rigid cake-plate variety, but one with a sweeping scimitar brim that imparts to him the look of a French painter or riverboat gambler. A darkness suffuses the photograph. The brim shadows the top of his face. His eyes gleam from the darkness. Most striking is the careful positioning of his hands. His right rests in his lap, gripping what could be a pair of gloves. His left is positioned in midair so that the diamond on his pinkie sparks with the intensity of a star.

    There is a secret embedded in this photograph. For now, however, suffice it to say the portrait suggests vanity, that Isaac was aware of himself and how he moved through the day, and saw himself as something bigger than a mere recorder of rainfall and temperature. He was a scientist, not some farmer who gauged the weather by aches in a rheumatoid knee. Isaac personally had encountered and explained some of the strangest atmospheric phenomena a weatherman could ever hope to experience, but also had read the works of the most celebrated meteorologists and physical geographers of the nineteenth century, men like Henry Piddington, Matthew Fontaine Maury, William Redfield, and James Espy, and he had followed their celebrated hunt for the Law of Storms. He believed deeply that he understood it all.

    He lived in a big time, astride the changing centuries. The frontier was still a living, vivid thing, with Buffalo Bill Cody touring his Wild West Show to sellout crowds around the globe, Bat Masterson a sports-writer in New Jersey, and Frank James opening the family ranch for tours at fifty cents a head. But a new America was emerging, one with big and global aspirations. Teddy Roosevelt, flanked by his Rough Riders, campaigned for the vice presidency. U.S. warships steamed to quell the Boxers. There was fabulous talk of a great American-built canal that would link the Atlantic to the Pacific, a task at which Vicomte de Lesseps and the French had so catastrophically failed. The nation in 1900 was swollen with pride and technological confidence. 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.

    There was talk even of controlling the weather—of subduing hail with cannon blasts and igniting forest fires to bring rain.

    In this new age, nature itself seemed no great obstacle.

    ISAAC’S WIFE, CORA, lay beside him. She was pregnant with their fourth child and the pregnancy had entered a difficult stretch, but now she slept peacefully, her abdomen a pale island against the darkness.

    The heat no doubt contributed to Isaac’s sleeplessness. It had been a problem all week, in fact all summer, especially for Cora, whose pregnancy had transformed her body into a furnace. Temperatures in Galveston had risen steadily since Tuesday. The heat broke 90 degrees on Thursday, and hit 90 again on Friday. Moisture from weeks of heavy rain concentrated in the air until the humidity was unbearable. Earlier that week Isaac had read in the Galveston News how a heat wave in Chicago had killed at least three people. Even the northernmost latitudes were experiencing unusual levels of warmth. For the first time in recorded history, the Bering Glacier in what eventually would become Alaska had begun to shrink, sprouting rivers, calving icebergs, and ultimately shedding six hundred feet of its depth. A correspondent for The Western World magazine wrote, The summer of 1900 will be long remembered as one of the most remarkable for sustained high temperature that has been experienced for almost a generation.

    The prolonged heat had warmed the waters of the Gulf to the temperature of a bath, a not-unhappy condition for the thousands of new immigrants just arrived from Europe at the Port of Galveston, known to many as the Western Ellis Island. Some camped now on the beach near the Army’s new gun emplacements, steeling themselves for the long journey north to open land and the riches promised them by railroads intent on populating America’s vast undeveloped prairie. In a pamphlet called Home Seekers, the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe 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. To Isaac, such quirks of weather were a fascination, and not just because he happened to be the chief weatherman in Texas. He was also a physician. He no longer saw patients, but had become a pioneer in medical climatology, the study of how weather affects people, and in this carried forth a tradition laid down by Hippocrates, who believed climate determined the character of men and nations.

    Hippocrates advised any physician arriving in an unfamiliar town to first examine its position with respect to the winds.

    As FRIDAY NIGHT ebbed into Saturday, the air at last cooled. The sudden change in temperature would come as a delightful surprise to others in Galveston, but to Isaac it was one more flicker of trouble.

    He let his mind wander through the house. He heard no sound from the children’s bedrooms. His eldest daughter, Allie May, was now twelve; his middle daughter, Rosemary, was eleven. His youngest, Esther Bellew, was six, but he still called her his baby. He heard nothing also from his brother, Joseph, who lived in the house. Eight years earlier, Joseph had come to work for Isaac as an assistant observer. The two men were still close, but soon any tie between them would be severed for all time and each would pass the remainder of his life as if the other never existed. Joseph was twenty-nine. Isaac was thirty-eight.

    Isaac’s house stood at 2511 Avenue Q, just three blocks north of the Gulf. It was four years old and replaced a previous house that had burned in a fire in November 1896. Isaac had ordered this house built atop a forest of stilts with the explicit goal of making it impervious to the worst storms the Gulf could deliver. It had two stories, with porches or galleries off each floor in the front and rear, and a small building in the backyard that served as a stable. The house was ideally situated. On Sundays Isaac and his family would join the torrent of other families walking down 25th Street toward the big Victorian bathhouses built over the Gulf. Sometimes they walked to Murdoch’s; other days they chose the Pagoda Company Bath House, with its two large octagonal pavilions and sloping pagoda roofs. The Clines reached it by walking the length of a 250-foot boardwalk that began at the foot of 24th Street, rose 16 vertical feet above the beach, and ran another 110 feet out over the waves, as if its builders believed they had conquered the sea for once and for all. An electric wire ran to a pole far out in the surf, where it powered a lamp suspended over the water. At night bathers gathered like insects.

    Isaac heard the usual sounds that sleeping houses make, even houses as strong as his. He heard the creaking and sighing of beams, posts, and joists as the relatively new lumber of his home absorbed the moisture of the night and released the last heat of day. He heard the susurrus of curtains luffed by the breeze. There would have been mice, too, and mosquitoes. If people sought to protect themselves at all, they propped tents of fine, gauzelike netting over their beds. No one had window screens.

    As Isaac listened, background noises came forward. One noise in particular. It was more than noise, really. If Isaac lay very still, he could feel the shock waves climb the stilts of his house, the same way he felt the vibration of the pipe organ Cora played at church each Sunday. To children in houses all along the beach, particularly the ninety-three children in the big, sad St. Mary’s Orphanage two miles west at the very edge of the sea, the sound was a delight. They heard it and felt it and dreamed it. To some, each shock wave was the concussion of British artillery in the Boer War or a ghost gun from the dead Maine, or perhaps the thud of an approaching giant. A welcome giant. The shuddering ground promised a delightful departure from the steamy sameness of Galveston’s summers, and it came with exquisite timing: Saturday. Only hours ahead lay Saturday night, the most delicious night of all.

    But the sound frightened Isaac. The thudding, he knew, was caused by great deep-ocean swells falling upon the beach. Most days the Gulf was as placid as a big lake, with surf that did not crash but rather wore itself away on the sand. The first swells had arrived Friday. Now the booming was louder and heavier, each concussion more profound.

    ISAAC WOKE AGAIN at 4:00 A.M., but this time the cause was obvious. His brother stood outside the bedroom door tapping gently and calling his name.

    Joseph too had been unable to sleep. Not a terribly creative man, he described this feeling as a sense of impending disaster. He had stayed up until midnight recording weather observations from a bank of instruments mounted on the roof of the Levy Building, a four-story brick building in the heart of Galveston’s commercial district. The barometers had captured only a slight decrease in pressure. The anemometer, which caught the wind in cups mounted at opposite ends of crossed metal bars, recorded wind speeds of eleven to nineteen miles an hour. It was capable of measuring velocities as high as one hundred miles an hour, but conditions had never come close to testing this capacity, nor did any rational soul believe they ever would. Throughout Friday afternoon and evening, a peculiar oppressiveness had settled over the city. Temperatures remained high well into the night.

    None of these observations was enough by itself to raise concern. For days, however, Isaac had been receiving cables from the Weather Bureau’s Central Office in Washington describing a storm apparently of tropical origin that had drenched Cuba. Although Isaac did not know it, there was confusion about the storm’s true course, debate as to its character. The bureau’s men in Cuba said the storm was nothing to worry about; Cuba’s own weather observers, who had pioneered hurricane detection, disagreed. Conflict between both groups had grown increasingly intense, an effect of the unending campaign of Willis Moore, chief of the U.S. Weather Bureau, to exert ever more centralized control over forecasting and the issuance of storm warnings. 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.

    At 11:30 A.M. on Friday, Moore had sent another telegram, this one notifying Isaac and other observers of a tropical storm centered in the Gulf of Mexico south of Louisiana, moving slowly northwest. The telegram predicted high northerly winds tonight and Saturday with probably heavy rain.

    Again, nothing especially worrisome. Tropical storms came ashore every summer. They brought wind and rain, even some flooding. Damage was rare. No one got hurt. But in one respect the telegram did surprise Isaac. Until now, Moore’s cables had expressed absolute confidence the storm was moving north toward the Atlantic coast.

    Isaac got out of bed, careful not to wake Cora. Joseph’s intrusion annoyed him. There was tension between the brothers. Nothing open—at least not yet. Just a persistent low-grade rivalry.

    He and Joseph descended to the kitchen, careful to avoid waking the children, and there by sheer force of habit Isaac put on a pot of coffee. They talked about the weather. A familiar dynamic emerged. Joseph, as the younger brother and junior employee eager to prove himself, made the case too strongly that something peculiar was happening and that Washington must be informed. Isaac, ever confident, told Joseph to get some sleep, that he would take over and assess the situation and if necessary telegraph his findings to headquarters.

    Isaac dressed. He stepped out onto the first-floor porch. With most of the block that faced him across Avenue Q still undeveloped, he had an unobstructed view of the sky and the cityscape to the north. He saw lime-washed bungalows and elaborate three-story homes with gables, bays, and cupolas, and just beyond these the big Rosenberg Women’s Home and the Bath Avenue Public School. At the corner, to his right and across the street, stood the three-story home of the Neville family, windows open, dew and drizzle darkening its intricate slate roof. Ever since the great fire of 1885, Galveston had required that roofs be shingled with slate instead of wood as a safety precaution, but in just a few hours the shingles from the Neville house, Isaac’s house, and thousands of others throughout Galveston would begin whirling through the air with an effect that evoked for many older residents the gore-filled afternoons they spent at Chancellorsville and Antietam.

    Isaac harnessed his horse to a small two-wheeled sulky that he used mostly when hunting and with a gentle click of the reins set out for the beach three blocks south.

    IT WAS A gorgeous morning, the breeze soft and suffused with mist, jasmine, and oleander. Stratus and cumulus clouds filled most of the sky, some bellying almost to the sea, but Isaac also saw patches of dawn blue rimmed with cloudsmoke. To his left, behind the clouds, the sun had begun to rise and at odd moments it turned the clouds orange-gray, like fire behind smoke. Seagulls hung in threes at fixed points in the sky where they rode head-on into the unaccustomed north wind, wing tips flinching for purchase. The wheels of Isaac’s sulky broadcast a reassuring crunch as they moved over the pavement of crushed oyster shells.

    By now the most industrious children were rising to do their chores and get them out of the way so they could go to the beach as early as possible. Everyone reveled in the refreshing coolness. Rabbi Henry Cohen was awake and preparing for Saturday’s services. Dr. Samuel O. Young, an amateur meteorologist and secretary of the Galveston Cotton Exchange, was having breakfast and planning his own early-morning trip to the beach. At 18th Street and Avenue O½, in a small two-story rental house, Louisa Rollfing made breakfast for her husband, August, who was due downtown that morning to continue the painting of a commercial building. Louisa looked out the window and as always felt just a hint of disappointment, or maybe sorrow, for although she liked Galveston, she still was not used to the landscape. To her, palms and live oak did not qualify as trees. She missed the great green-black forests of her childhood home in Germany with trees so old and large, that in some places it is almost dark in daytime.

    Visitors approaching Galveston from the sea saw it as a brilliant swath of light between sea and sky, like mercury floating on a deep blue plain. In the summer of 1900, a boy named John W. Thomason Jr.—later to become a well-known writer of military history—arrived to spend his vacation with his grandfather in a cottage off Broadway, half a dozen blocks from Isaac Cline’s office. The Gulf breeze cooled the city at nightfall; one of the most beautiful beaches in the world offered delightful surf-bathing; and you saw everybody there in the afternoons, bathing, promenading or driving in carriages on the smooth, crisp sands. He left town on Saturday, September 1, exactly a week before Isaac’s trip to the beach, very sad to leave. He looked back with longing as his train clicked over the long wooden trestle to the mainland and his newfound friends receded into the steam rising from Galveston Bay. That city as it was, he wrote, I never saw again, nor some of the boys and girls I knew there.

    Where critics most faulted Galveston was for its lack of geophysical presence. The city occupied a long, narrow island that also formed the southern boundary of Galveston Bay, spanned by three railroad trestles and a wagon bridge. Its highest point, on Broadway, was 8.7 feet above sea level; its average altitude was half that, so low that with each one-foot increase in tide, the city lost a thousand feet of beach. Josiah Gregg, one of America’s most celebrated traveler-raconteurs, wrote in his diary in November 1841 of hearing about a past flood in which this island was so completely overflowed that a small vessel actually sailed out over the middle of it. He did not believe the story. He could see, however, that someday flooding might even endanger lives.

    Regardless of one’s view, the fact was that 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. But city leaders also knew there was only room on the Texas coast for one great city, and that they were in a winner-take-all race against Houston, just fifty miles to the north. As of 1900, Galveston had the lead. The year before, it had become the biggest cotton port in the country and the third-busiest port overall. Forty-five steamship lines served the city, among them the White Star Line, which provided service between Galveston and Europe and in just over a decade would lose a great ship to hubris and ice. Consulates in the city represented sixteen countries, including Russia and Japan. And Galveston’s population was growing fast. On Friday, September 7, Isaac had read in the News the first brief report on the Galveston count of the 1900 census, which found that the city had grown 30 percent in only ten years.

    Galveston now had electric streetcars, electric lights, local and long-distance telephone service, two domestic telegraph companies, three big concert halls, and twenty hotels, the most elegant being the Tremont, south of Isaac’s office, with two hundred ocean-facing rooms, fifty elegant rooms with private baths, and its own electric-power plant.

    What most marked the city was money. As early as 1857 Galveston had achieved a reputation as a cosmopolitan town with a passion for fine things. One of its French chefs distinguished himself with a fusion of frontier and Continental cuisine that featured beefsteak goddam a la mode. By 1900, the city was reputed to have more millionaires per square mile than Newport, Rhode Island. Much of their money was vividly on display in the ornate mansions and lush gardens of Broadway, the city’s premier street.

    The city offered everything from sex to sacks of Tidal Wave Flour. For the grieving rich, the giant livery and funeral works of J. Levy and Brothers offered a very special option: A child’s white hearse and harness, with white horses.

    WINDOWS WERE OPEN in all the houses Isaac passed, and this imparted to the city an aura of vulnerability. Suddenly the noise of the sulky’s wheels seemed more jarring than reassuring. Ordinarily the great bathhouses at the end of the street would have brightened Isaac’s mood, but today they looked swollen and worn; they floated on cushions of greenish mist like castles from the mind of Poe.

    Isaac drove until he had a clear view of the Gulf, then stopped the sulky. He stood, pulled out his watch, and began timing the long hills of water that rolled toward the beach. The crests of the waves were brown with sand, but on the surface between crests the spindrift laid intricate patterns of shocking-white lace.

    Isaac knew the low-pressure center of the storm had to be somewhere off to his left, out in the Gulf. It was a fundamental tenet of marine navigation, one he explained during a lecture at the Galveston YMCA on a Saturday evening in 1891. Large crowds gathered for such talks. They consumed the spoken word the way later men would consume television. In the northern hemisphere,

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