CHAPTER XIX.
Galveston Island Directly in the Path of Storms, with No Way of Escape—What Is the City’s Future—All Coast Cities in Danger—New York Will Be Flooded—Hurricane Foretold—Galveston’s Settlement—Storm Will Recur.
Galveston Island, with a stretch of thirty-five miles, rises only five feet above the level of high tide. To the south is an unbroken sweep of sea for 800 miles. Twelve hundred miles away is the nesting place of storms—storms that rise out of the dead calm of the doldrums and sweep northward, sometimes with a fury that nothing can withstand. Most of these storms describe a parabola, with the westward arch touching the Atlantic coast, after which the track is northeastward, finally disappearing with the storm itself in the north Atlantic.
But every little while one of these West Indian hurricanes starts northwestward from its island nest, moving steadily on its course and entering the gulf itself.
September and October are the months of these storms, and of the two months September is worse. In the ten years between 1878 and 1887, inclusive, fifty-seven hurricanes arose in the warm, moist conditions of the West Indian doldrums. Most of these passed out to sea and to the St. Lawrence River country, where they disappeared. But the hurricane of October 11, 1887, came ashore at New Orleans on October 17, and wrought havoc as it passed up the Eastern States to New Brunswick. The storm of October 8, 1886, reached Louisiana on the 12th, curving again toward Galveston on the Texas coast. It was in this storm that Galveston was flooded with loss of life and property while Indianola was destroyed beyond recovery.
With these non-recurring storms two conditions favor their passage into the gulf. A high barometric area lies over the Atlantic coast States, while a trough of low pressure leads into the gulf and northward into the region of the Dakotas. The hurricane takes the path of least resistance always, and it must pass far northward before it can work its natural way around the tardy high area that hangs over the central coast States. It was this condition exactly which diverted the recent storm to Galveston and the Texas coast.
The origin of a hurricane is not fully settled. Its accompanying phenomena, however, are significant to even the casual observer. A long swell on the ocean usually precedes it. This swell may be forced to great distances in advance of the storm and be observed two or three days before the storm strikes. A faint rise in the barometer may be noticed before the sharp fall follows. Wisps of thin, cirrus cloud float for 200 miles around the storm center. The air is calm and sultry until a gentle breeze springs from the southeast. This breeze becomes a wind, a gale, and, finally, a tempest, with matted clouds overhead, precipitating rain and a churning sea below throwing clouds of spume into the air.
Here are all the terrible phenomena of the West Indian hurricane—the tremendous wind, the thrashing sea, the lightning, the bellowing thunder, and the drowning rain that seems to be dashed from mighty tanks with the force of Titans.
But almost in an instant all these may cease. The wind dies, the lightning goes out, the rain ceases, and the thunder bellows only in the distance. The core of the storm is overhead. Only the waves of the sea are churning. There may be twenty miles of this central core, a diameter of only one-thirtieth that of the storm. It passes quickly, and with as little warning as preceded its stoppage the storm closes in again, but with the wind from the opposite direction, and the whole phenomena suggesting a reversal of all that has gone before.
No storm possible in the elements presents the terrors that accompany the hurricane. The twisting tornado is confined to a narrow track and it has no long-drawn-out horrors. Its climax is reached in a moment. The hurricane, however, grows and grows, and when it has reached to 100 or 120 miles an hour nothing can withstand it.