Some hurricanes were so big that they changed history. They rewrote laws, forced cities to build differently, and pushed scientists to invent better ways to see storms coming. Here are four of the most important hurricanes in American history, what each one taught us, and how warnings have improved so much over the last 125 years that a storm is far less dangerous today than it used to be.
The Great Galveston Hurricane (1900)
On September 8, 1900, a huge hurricane slammed into Galveston, Texas. Back then Galveston was the biggest city in Texas, with about 38,000 people, a rich, busy port built on a low sandy island in the Gulf of Mexico. It sat only a few feet above the sea, and nobody yet understood what a powerful hurricane could do to a place that low.
The storm hit as an estimated Category 4, with winds around 145 mph (233 km/h). But the wind wasn't the worst part. The hurricane shoved a wall of ocean water, a storm surge, right over the island. That surge reached about 15 feet (4.6 m) high. Since Galveston's highest point was barely 9 feet (2.7 m) above the sea, the whole island went underwater.
The destruction was nearly total. Entire neighborhoods were swept away. Galveston remains one of the most important storms in American history, the disaster that pushed the whole country to start taking hurricanes seriously. The hardest part is that almost no one saw it coming.
In 1900, there was really no way to warn people about a hurricane. The U.S. Weather Bureau existed, but there were no satellites, no radar, and no way to track a storm crossing the open ocean. People got a few hours of notice at best, from changes in the wind and the air pressure that local observers could feel.
Afterward, Galveston made two bold engineering choices. First, the city built a giant seawall, 17 feet (5.2 m) tall, to block future surge. Second, workers lifted the whole city, raising the ground by as much as 17 feet (5.2 m), jacking up buildings and filling in beneath them. That seawall still stands today. For those of us who work on coastal defenses, Galveston is the classic story of a city that got hit hard and chose to rebuild smarter. The disaster also pushed the whole country to invest in better forecasting and stronger coasts.
Hurricane Katrina (2005)
Hurricane Katrina is one of the most well-known hurricanes in American history. It formed over the Atlantic in late August 2005 and grew fast. Over the warm Gulf of Mexico, Katrina reached Category 5 with winds of 175 mph (280 km/h). By the time it made landfall near Buras, Louisiana, on August 29, 2005, it had eased to a Category 3 with winds around 125 mph (201 km/h).1 It was still an enormous storm.
The storm surge was the real danger. In parts of Mississippi, it reached an incredible 28 feet (8.5 m), wiping out everything along the coast. But the worst of it hit New Orleans, Louisiana. Much of the city sits in a bowl below sea level, protected by walls and embankments called levees. During Katrina, those levees failed. Water poured in and flooded about 80% of the city. More than a million people had to leave their homes, and the storm did about $201.3 billion in damage (in 2024 dollars), making Katrina the costliest hurricane in U.S. history.1
Katrina taught the country some hard lessons. The government's response was widely criticized as too slow. Afterward, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) was reorganized to move faster, New Orleans built a far stronger levee system costing about $14 billion, and towns everywhere took a serious look at their own evacuation plans.
Hurricane Maria (2017)
On September 20, 2017, Hurricane Maria hit Puerto Rico as a Category 4 with winds of 155 mph (250 km/h). Just before that, Maria had reached Category 5 strength with winds of 175 mph (280 km/h) and had already torn through the island of Dominica and the U.S. Virgin Islands.2
Here's something worth knowing: Puerto Rico is a U.S. territory. The 3.2 million people who lived there were American citizens, just like people in Texas or Florida, so the U.S. government was responsible for the disaster response.
Maria's effect on Puerto Rico was staggering. The whole island lost electricity. Every bit of the power grid went down. In many places the lights stayed off for months, and some remote towns waited nearly a year. Roads were buried under landslides and fallen trees, and cell towers were destroyed, so families couldn't call for help or reach each other. The damage came to about $115.2 billion (in 2024 dollars).
There's an important, honest part to Maria's story. At first, people thought the worst was over once the wind stopped. It wasn't. The hardest stretch came in the long, dark months afterward, when hospitals had no power and roads were still blocked, and the true scale of the damage turned out to be far bigger than anyone first realized. A later study for the government of Puerto Rico, carried out by George Washington University, showed just how much harm those slow months caused. That's why we measure a storm's full impact carefully and honestly, even when the truth is hard.
Hurricane Harvey (2017)
Just weeks before Maria, another historic storm struck the United States. Hurricane Harvey made landfall on August 25, 2017, at San Jose Island, Texas, as a Category 4 with winds of 130 mph (209 km/h). Harvey had powerful wind, but that's not what made it historic. It was the rain.
After landfall, Harvey did something unusual. Most hurricanes move inland and weaken. Harvey stalled and sat over the Houston area for days, from August 25 through August 30, dumping rain the whole time. The peak fell at Nederland, Texas: an astonishing 60.58 inches (1,525 mm). That set a U.S. record for rainfall from a single tropical storm.3
Picture that: 60.58 inches is more than 5 feet (1.5 m) of rain, stacked higher than most adults are tall, over an entire city. The flooding was catastrophic. More than 300,000 buildings flooded, and more than 500,000 vehicles were ruined. The total damage reached about $160.0 billion (in 2024 dollars), one of the costliest disasters in U.S. history.
Harvey taught a lesson worth remembering. A lot of people watch only the wind speed and the category number when a hurricane is coming. Harvey showed that a slow storm dropping enormous rain can be every bit as dangerous as the strongest wind, sometimes more.
How Warnings Have Gotten Better
One of the most hopeful parts of hurricane history is how much better we've gotten at spotting storms and warning people. The progress over the last 125 years is remarkable.
When the Galveston Hurricane struck in 1900, there was essentially no warning at all. People had, at best, a few hours based on what local observers could see and feel. No satellites, no radar, no computers to model where a storm was going.
The Birth of Hurricane Hunting
In 1943, during World War II, Lieutenant Colonel Joseph Duckworth became the first person to fly a plane into a hurricane on purpose, in a small single-engine AT-6 Texan trainer near Galveston, Texas. By 1944, organized Air Force reconnaissance missions had begun. These crews, the Hurricane Hunters, fly straight into storms to measure wind, pressure, and other key data. By the 1950s, regular tracking flights were a big part of forecasting.
Satellites Change Everything
On April 1, 1960, the United States launched TIROS-1, the first weather satellite. For the first time ever, scientists could watch storms form over the open ocean from space. It changed everything. With satellites, no hurricane could form without being spotted. Before them, a storm could reach the coast with almost no warning. After them, that became nearly impossible.
Better Communication
In the 1970s, the Saffir-Simpson scale gave everyone a simple way to describe a hurricane's strength, from Category 1 (weakest) to Category 5 (strongest). That made it much easier for officials and families to understand a threat and act on it.
Modern Forecasting
Today, the National Hurricane Center gives forecasts up to 5 days ahead, and they've grown far more accurate. The average track error at 48 hours is now about what the 24-hour error was back in 2000. In plain terms: we can predict where a hurricane will be in two days about as well as we used to predict just one day out.
That gain comes from many tools working together: satellites watching from space, radar showing the rain, Hurricane Hunter planes flying inside the storm, ocean buoys reading the sea, and supercomputers modeling the atmosphere. Together they give families more time to prepare and get to safety.
What We've Learned
Every major hurricane teaches us something new. Here are the big lessons from the storms above.
- Galveston (1900) showed we need warning systems and protection like seawalls. Without them, a low coast is dangerously exposed.
- Katrina (2005) showed that levees and evacuation plans have to work for everyone, including people without cars, people with disabilities, and people who don't have much money. A plan that leaves anyone behind isn't a good plan.
- Harvey (2017) showed that rain and flooding can be just as dangerous as wind. A storm doesn't have to be a Category 5 to do terrible damage.
- Maria (2017) showed that help has to reach every community, especially the ones that are isolated or already struggling. Recovery isn't finished until it reaches the last town.
Because of these lessons, building codes are stronger, evacuation plans are more fair, forecasts are sharper, and communities are better prepared than ever.
The Real Hero of the Story
If you ask us, the hero of this whole story isn't a seawall or a satellite, as much as we love both. It's warning time. In 1900, Galveston got a few hours. Today a coast can get several days. That head start, more than anything else, is why a storm is far less dangerous now than it was a hundred years ago.
We'll be honest about the hard part too. We've gotten very good at seeing a hurricane coming. We're still not as good at making sure help reaches every family afterward, which is exactly the lesson Maria left us. That's the work still ahead.
Now that you know the history, learn your own job for the next storm in Hurricane Safety for Kids, or go back to the basics with What Is a Hurricane?.
Sources
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Beven, J. L., et al. (2008). Atlantic hurricane season of 2005. Monthly Weather Review, 136(3), 1109–1173. https://doi.org/10.1175/2007MWR2074.1 ↩ ↩2
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Pasch, R. J., Penny, A. B., & Berg, R. (2023). Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Maria (AL152017). National Hurricane Center. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL152017_Maria.pdf ↩
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Blake, E. S., & Zelinsky, D. A. (2018). Tropical Cyclone Report: Hurricane Harvey (AL092017). National Hurricane Center. https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/tcr/AL092017_Harvey.pdf ↩