The most powerful hurricane in its history hit Key West on September 10 1919. First sighted taking shape in the Lesser Antilles, it had been followed for a week as it travelled past the Dominican Republic into the Bahamas. The severe storm intensified as it turned west, heading for the Florida Straits as a Category …
The port of Galveston is an island city. It sits at the east end of Galveston Island, an overgrown sandbar between 2-5 km (1.5-3 mi) wide and 50 km (30 mi) long that controls the entrance to Galveston Bay on the Gulf of Mexico. It was developed as a pirate’s lair and slave market before …
Nobody was prepared for what happened. In New York City and along the eastern seaboard the temperature at midday was in the fifties and mild for early March. The next day’s forecast from the US Weather Bureau was for more of the same: ‘cloudy, followed by light rain and clearing’. Instead, that Sunday afternoon the …