The Galveston hurricane of 1900 remains the deadliest natural disaster in U.S. history.
Here are the strongest hurricanes to hit the U.S. mainland based on windspeed at landfall:
- Labor Day Hurricane of 1935: 185-mph in Florida.
- Hurricane Camille (1969): 175-mph in Mississippi.
- Hurricane Andrew (1992): 165-mph in Florida.
- Hurricane Michael (2018): 155-mph in Florida.
Hurricane with sustained wind speeds of 74 mph to 95 mph are classified as Category 1 strength. Category 1 hurricanes can cause damage to unanchored mobile homes and signs. Trees can also be severely damaged by Category 1 hurricane winds, with large branches breaking and some trees being completely uprooted.
The deadliest Atlantic hurricane in recorded history was the Great Hurricane of 1780, which resulted in 22,000–27,501 fatalities. In recent years, the deadliest hurricane was Hurricane Mitch of 1998, with at least 11,374 deaths attributed to it.
The JTWC's unofficial estimate of one-minute sustained winds of 305 km/h (190 mph) would, by that measure, make Haiyan the most powerful storm ever recorded to strike land.
The deadliest hurricane in U.S. history was the 1900 Galveston Hurricane, a Category 4 storm that essentially obliterated the city of Galveston, Texas, on September 8, 1900.
A hypercane is a hypothetical class of extreme tropical cyclone that could form if sea surface temperatures reached approximately 50 °C (122 °F), which is 15 °C (27 °F) warmer than the warmest ocean temperature ever recorded.
To be classified as a hurricane, a tropical cyclone must have one-minute-average maximum sustained winds at 10 m above the surface of at least 74 mph (Category 1). The highest classification in the scale, Category 5, consists of storms with sustained winds of at least 157 mph.
On the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, a Category 4 hurricane has winds of 130 mph to 156 mph. Category 4 winds will cause catastrophic damage, hurricane forecasters said, such as: - Well-built homes can sustain severe damage with the loss of most of the roof structure and/or some exterior walls.
Hurricane Bernard, an example of a fictional Category 8 hurricane, before Delaware landfall. A Category 8 is a hypothetical Saffir-Simpson rating beyond the Category 5 rating which has never officially been recorded in human history.
By the time the storm strengthened to a category 3 hurricane, winds exceeded 115 miles per hour. At its height as a category 5 hurricane over the Gulf of Mexico, Katrina's wind speeds exceeded 170 miles per hour.
Just twenty-six days after Katrina's landfall, Hurricane Rita—the fourth-strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded—swept from east to west across the upper Gulf of Mexico and flooded communities across 250 miles of coastal Louisiana.
Flooding, caused largely as a result of fatal engineering flaws in the flood protection system (levees) around the city of New Orleans, precipitated most of the loss of lives.
The energy of Katrina's entire surface wind field – called integrated kinetic energy – was three times greater than Ida. Katrina, which made landfall on the same date as Ida, 16 years earlier, had hurricane force winds extending out more than 90 miles from the center, and tropical force winds to more than 200 miles.
