The Storm of the Century by Al Roker

Author:Al Roker
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2015-06-28T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER 10

THE NIGHT OF HORRORS

AS NIGHT FELL ON GALVESTON, THE STORM ONLY GAINED strength.

Isaac Cline’s realization had been correct: the hurricane that was passing straight through the city was circling around an eye of drastic low pressure. This was the kind of storm that does not readily weaken easily but instead draws energy from a variety of sources, throwing its titanic violence in a multitude of directions all at once.

In 1900, what meteorologists feared most about hurricanes was the astonishing strength and wildness of the winds that accompany them. Hurricane-force winds rip roofs from buildings and tear up deep-rooted trees and structures on deep foundations. They toss those gigantic, heavy objects about as if they were nothing but balsa-wood slivers.

But the ripped-up debris is, of course, big and heavy. Objects become deadly missiles with bomb-like destructive power over people, buildings, everything. Smaller objects too, borne through the air with force—slate roof tiles, lighting fixtures, flowerpots, anything at all—add to this deadly barrage, which occurs on multiple trajectories, random and unpredictable.

Meanwhile, with the roofs shattered and the big timbers shivering and quaking, the wind robs buildings of all integrity, exposing them to the rising, shoving flood. From shacks to grand homes, churches, and public buildings: all go down, sometimes slowly and in pieces, sometimes all at once.

And the bigger the building, the more stone and brick involved in its construction, the deadlier to frail human life is its fall.

In 1900, meteorologists knew all that. But the winds produced by this cycling hurricane attacking Galveston were of higher velocity than those scientists believed was physically possible. The speed resulted in part from the air pressure at the deathly still center of this system, likewise lower than most scientists then believed possible. They thought air pressure could never fall as low as the pressure was in fact descending now on the evening of September 8, 1900, in Galveston, Texas.

Joseph Cline was shaken anew by the final barometer reading he took that day. Like Captain Halsey, at sea earlier in the week, Joseph was getting a reading below 29 inches. That was lower than barometers were generally known to fall.

So the Levy Building—an unusually solid structure—was actually rocking in the blasts of wind. And at 5:15 that afternoon, the wind gauge on the rooftop weather station was torn from its housing. It hurtled into the dark sky to join the rain gauge in oblivion.

When that happens, a wind gauge has done its work, in a crude fashion: it is reporting that the wind speed is terrifyingly high. The Galveston gauge’s final official wind-velocity recording was 84 miles per hour for the previous five minutes. That period included two minutes at nearly 100 miles per hour. And the wind was getting higher.

And yet Willis Moore, the Weather Bureau chief, had always said winds could not reach those speeds, that such reports were anecdotal and hysterically exaggerated—the kind of thing those superstitious Cubans might come up with. Tonight the Galveston storm was proving wrong both Moore himself and also many of the certainties on which he and the entire bureau based their practice.

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