Great Hurricane of 1780
The Revolutionary War was not going well for Gen. George Washington in 1780. By August of that year, the British had captured South Carolina, and in September, traitor Benedict Arnold gave the British the plans for the fort at West Point, New York. But the winds of fortune shifted in October when the most powerful Atlantic hurricane in recorded history struck British warships in the Caribbean.
The storm pounded Barbados on October 9 with winds in excess of 200 m.p.h., strong enough to strip the bark off trees and kill more than 4,500 people on that island alone. The wind and a massive storm surge destroyed the British war fleet stationed at nearby St. Lucia; one ship landed on top of the city hospital, leaving the building in ruins. The hurricane left more than 22,000 people dead and the British fleet in tatters. Soon afterward, the tide of the American Revolution began to turn in favor of the colonists.
Mt. Pelee Eruption
St. Pierre, the largest city on the French Caribbean island of Martinique, was a bustling colonial capital until January 1902, when Mt. Pelee, which looms over the island, began to show signs of increased volcanic activity. By April, small explosions and eruptions of sulfur gas and ash had driven the wildlife from the mountain’s slopes into nearby inhabited areas. By some estimates, 50 people — mostly children — were killed by snakebites that month.
Then, on the morning of May 8, Mt. Pelee sent an immense cloud of ash, rock and superheated gas hurtling toward St. Pierre at a speed of about 100 m.p.h. The blast, powerful enough to capsize ships anchored offshore, leveled the city in just a few minutes, killing some 30,000 people. Only two St. Pierre residents survived, a young shoemaker and a criminal who had been confined in a dungeon-like cell, who was later pardoned and joined a circus as the “Lone Survivor of St. Pierre.”
Wellington Avalanche
By the end of February 1910, nine straight days of snow had fallen in Washington’s Cascade Mountains. The heavy snowfall forced two trains making their way to Seattle to spend several nights in the isolated mountain town of Wellington. In the early hours of March 1, while passengers and crew dozed on the idle trains, the snowfall turned into heavy rain.
That caused a massive slab of snow and ice to break loose and crash into the sleeping town below, making a sound that one witness described as “the crashing of 10,000 freight trains” as it hit the depot, throwing the trains 150 feet down a deep ravine. The avalanche killed 96 people, making it the deadliest in North American history.
Peshtigo Fire
Much has been written about the Great Chicago Fire, but that inferno was only one of several that occurred in the Great Lakes area on October 8, 1871. That same day, a firestorm of hellish dimensions consumed more than a million acres of Wisconsin and Michigan. It crossed rivers and destroyed woodlands, farms and towns including Peshtigo, Wisconsin, the largest settlement in the area, with a pre-fire population of about 1,700. An estimated 1,200 to 2,400
The cause of the blaze remains somewhat of a mystery. Many researchers believe a combination of dry weather and strong winds helped stoke several smaller fires into a single conflagration so huge that it created its own weather system, triggering wind gusts of up to 80 m.p.h. and fueling a number of the small fiery tornadoes known as fire whirls. Another theory is that the numerous simultaneous wildfires that started the blaze were ignited by falling fragments of the passing Biela comet.
Tri-State Tornado
The funnel cloud of this monster first touched down near Ellington, Missouri, at about 1 p.m. on March 18, 1925. Traveling northeast at speeds of up to 73 m.p.h., the twister killed 11 people in Missouri before crossing the Mississippi River into Illinois, where it shredded dozens of towns in its mile-wide path of destruction. It then traversed the Wabash River into Indiana. By the time the twister broke apart, it had killed nearly 700 people. Many of the dead were children who died when their schools were reduced to rubble.
The Tri-State Tornado — now recognized as a category F5 twister, the most powerful ranking — still holds several tornado records: the longest track (219 miles), the longest duration (3.5 hours), and the largest number of deaths caused in any one U.S. city (234 killed in Murphysboro, Illinois).
Great Blizzard of 1888
Next time you hear someone grumbling about winter weather, remind them of this snowstorm, which dumped as much as 50 inches of snow in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New York and New Jersey. Starting on March 11 and lasting four days, the storm caused some 400 deaths and crippled the Northeast. Trains, businesses and three-story houses were completely buried by snowdrifts higher than 45 feet. According to the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration, the blizzard “still holds the distinction of the worst winter storm on record in many areas of the Northeast.” The storm’s devastation prompted numerous infrastructure improvements including underground subways and telegraph lines.
Galveston Hurricane
The boomtown of Galveston, Texas, was the center of the cotton trade at the turn of the 20th Century. Even though it was situated on an island no higher than 9 feet above sea level, Galveston’s residents decided against building a seawall to protect themselves from storms. That decision proved to have fatal consequences.
Early in the evening of September 8, 1900, a Category 4 hurricane made a direct hit on Galveston, slamming into the unsuspecting city with winds of more than 130 m.p.h. and a storm surge of 15 feet. The hurricane obliterated some 3,500 buildings and killed more than 8,000 people.
San Francisco Earthquake
Shortly before dawn on April 18, 1906, San Francisco had the rudest awakening imaginable when it was shaken for as long as 60 seconds by a powerful earthquake rated at a magnitude of about 7.8. The quake, felt from Oregon to Los Angeles, ruptured gas lines that fueled fires throughout the city. Firefighters were left helpless as water mains also ruptured. The temblor and subsequent fires claimed about 3,000 lives and left more than 200,000 people homeless.
Indian Ocean Tsunami
An even more immense earthquake, of magnitude 9.2, struck the Indian Ocean near the island of Sumatra on December 26, 2004. The quake triggered a tsunami wave up to 80 feet high that devastated the region, causing damage in 18 countries from Australia to India to South Africa. Sea-level changes were recorded as far away as New Jersey. More than 280,000 people are believed to have perished in the disaster, and more than a million were left without shelter.
1931 China Flood
For sheer deadliness, nothing compares to the floods that devastated central China in 1931. Several river systems overflowed in July and August of that year, including the Yangtze, Yellow and Huai rivers. An estimated 3.7 million people died, making it the single most deadly natural disaster in recorded history. While many drowned, others died from typhus, cholera and other diseases. Others starved to death after the flooding destroyed the rice crop. There were also reports of infanticide and cannibalism resulting from this disaster.
