Galveston's weather chief called a serious hurricane strike impossible. One hit anyway

In 1891, Isaac Cline, the US Weather Bureau's chief meteorologist in Galveston, Texas, wrote that it was virtually impossible for a hurricane to seriously damage the island, and the city built no seawall. On 8 September 1900, a hurricane's storm surge drowned the city anyway, killing at least 6,000 people in a few hours — still the deadliest natural disaster in US history. Cline's own pregnant wife was among the dead.

— Erik Larson, Isaac's Storm: A Man, a Time, and the Deadliest Hurricane in History — Crown Publishers, 1999
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