Isaac's Storm

 

Isaac's Storm by Erik Larson

Nonfiction/Science

2000 Vintage Books (first published in 1999)

Finished on December 19, 2020

Rating: 3/5 (Good)

Publisher's Blurb:

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 in what remains the greatest natural disaster in American history--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. Riveting, powerful, and unbearably suspenseful, Isaac's Storm is the story of what can happen when human arrogance meets the great uncontrollable force of nature.

My husband read Isaac's Storm many years ago and said it was a very good read, so I added it to my nonfiction TBR collection where it lingered for a couple of decades. I finally pulled it from that shelf and added it to my stack for the Nonfiction November reading challenge (which I extended into December). This was not my first encounter with Erik Larson's writing (I listened to Dead Wake in 2015) and while I appreciate his extensive research, it took me well over 100 pages to get interested in this book. That is just about the time when he starts describing the actual hurricane and the horrific affect it had on the community of Galveston. At that point, I was spellbound and couldn't stop reading.

I've lived where earthquakes, tornadoes and blizzards are commonplace, but I have never lived where the threat of a hurricane is a way of life. After reading Larson's account of the Galveston hurricane, I hope to never have to worry about that particular weather event! I'm also thankful for the advances in weather forecasting, although even with that modern technology, people still continue to lose their homes, businesses, and quite often, their lives as a result of the destructive nature of hurricanes. I can guarantee that I wouldn't be one of those individuals who chooses to remain with their house! 

Passages of Note:

Waves form by absorbing energy from the wind. The longer the "fetch," or the expanse of the sea over which the wind can blow without obstruction, the taller a wave gets. The taller it gets, the more efficiently it absorbs additional energy. Generally, its maximum height will equal half the speed of the wind. Thus a wind of 150 miles an hour can produce waves up to 75 feet tall. Other conditions, such as the chance superimposition of two are more waves, can cause waves to grow even bigger. The tallest wave on record was 112 feet, but occurred amid steady winds of only 75 miles an hour. 

and

As soon as they reached the Texas coast, however, they changed shape again. Whenever a deep-sea swell enters shallow water its leading edge slows. Water piles up behind it. The wave grows again. It is this effect that makes earthquake-spawned tsunamis so deceptive and so deadly. A tsunami travels across the ocean as a small hump of water but at speeds as high as five hundred miles an hour. When it reaches land, it explodes.

and

At 7:30 P.M., the wind shifted again, this time from the east to south. And again it accelerated. It moved through the city like a mailman delivering dynamite. Sustained winds must have reached 150 miles an hour, gusts perhaps 200 or more.

The sea followed.

Galveston became Atlantis.

While I didn't love Isaac's Storm, I'm glad I finally got around to reading it and learning not only about the history of this particular Galveston hurricane, but also a little bit about meteorology.