Isaac's Storm (4 page)

Even
so,
the
day
felt
wrong.
Ordinarily,
offshore
winds
kept
the
surf
and
tides
down,
but
now,
despite
the
brisk
north
wind,
both
the
surf
and
tide
were
rising.
It
was
a
pattern
new
to
Isaac.

He
drove
his
sulky
back
to
the
beach.
He
again
timed
the
swells.
He
noted
their
shape,
their
color,
the
arc
they
produced
as
they
mounted
the
sand.
They
were
heavier
now
and
pushed
seawater
onto
the
streets
closest
to
the
beach.

Isaac
returned
to
his
office
and
composed
a
telegram
to
the
Central
Office
in
Washington.
He
ended
the
telegram:
"Such
high
water
with
opposing
winds
never
observed
previously."

Isaac's
concern
was
tempered
by
his
belief
that
no
storm
could
do
serious
damage
to
Galveston.
He
had
concluded
this
on
the
basis
of
his
own
analysis
of
the
unique
geography
of
the
Gulf
and
how
it
shaped
the
region's
weather.
In
1891,
in
the
wake
of
a
tropical
storm
that
Galveston
weathered
handily,
the
editors
of
the
Galveston
News
invited
Isaac
to
appraise
the
city's
vulnerability
to
extreme
weather.
Isaac,
father
of
three,
husband,
lover,
scientist,
and
creature
of
the
new
heroic
American
age,
wrote:
"The
opinion
held
by
some
who
are
unacquainted
with
the
actual
conditions
of
things,
that
Galveston
will
at
some
time
be
seriously
damaged
by
some
such
disturbance,
is
simply
an
absurd
delusion."

At
the
top
of
the
Levy
Building
the
anemometer
spun.
The
wind
vane
shifted
ever
so
slightly.
The
self-recording
barometer
etched
another
tiny
decline.

FAR
OUT
TO
sea,
one
hundred
miles
from
where
Isaac
stood,
Capt.
J.
W.
Simmons,
master
of
the
steamship
Pensacola,
prayed
softly
to
himself
as
horizontal
spheres
of
rain
exploded
against
the
bridge
with
such
force
they
luminesced
in
a
billion
pinpoints
of
light,
like
fireworks
in
a
green-black
sky.

He
had
stumbled
into
the
deadliest
storm
ever
to
target
America.
Within
the
next
twenty-four
hours,
eight
thousand
men,
women,
and
children
in
the
city
of
Galveston
would
lose
their
lives.
The
city
itself
would
lose
its
future.
Isaac
would
suffer
an
unbearable
loss.
And
he
would
wonder
always
if
some
of
the
blame
did
not
belong
to
him.

This
is
the
story
of
Isaac
and
his
time
in
America,
the
last
turning
of
the
centuries,
when
the
hubris
of
men
led
them
to
believe
they
could
disregard
even
nature
itself.

IT
BEGAN,
AS
all
things
must,
with
an
awakening
of
molecules.
The
sun
rose
over
the
African
highlands
east
of
Cameroon
and
warmed
grasslands,
forests,
lakes,
and
rivers,
and
the
men
and
creatures
that
moved
and
breathed
among
them;
it
warmed
their
exhalations
and
caused
these
to
rise
upward
as
a
great
plume
of
carbon,
oxygen,
nitrogen,
and
hydrogen,
the
earth's
soul.
The
air
contained
water:
haze,
steam,
vapor;
the
stench
of
day-old
kill
and
the
greetings
of
men
glad
to
awaken
from
the
cool
mystery
of
night.
There
was
cordite,
ether,
urine,
dung.
Coffee.
Bacon.
Sweat.
An
invisible
paisley
of
plumes
and
counterplumes
formed
above
the
earth,
the
pattern
as
ephemeral
as
the
copper
and
bronze
veils
that
appear
when
water
enters
whiskey.

Winds
converged.
A
big,
hot
easterly
raced
around
a
heat-induced
low
in
the
Sahara,
where
temperatures
averaged
113
degrees
Fahrenheit,
heat
scalded
the
air,
and
winds
filled
the
sky
with
dust.
This
easterly
blew
toward
the
moist
and
far
cooler
bulge
of
West
Africa.
High
over
the
lush
lands
north
of
the
Gulf
of
Guinea,
over
Ouagadougou,
Zungeru,
and
Yamoussoukro,
this
thermal
stream
encountered
moist
monsoon
air
blowing
in
from
the
sea
from
the
southwest.
The
monsoon
crossed
the
point
where
zero
latitude
and
zero
longitude
meet,
and
entered
the
continent
over
Nigeria.
Where
these
winds
collided,
they
produced
a
zone
of
instability.
The
air
began
to
undulate.

THE
SEAS
WERE
hot.
The
land
was
hot.
Throughout
much
of
the
United
States
temperatures
rose
into
the
nineties
and
often
broke
100.
Heat
suffused
the
Rockies,
Nebraska,
Kansas,
Missouri,
Oklahoma,
and
a
vast
swath
of
country
from
the
Gulf
all
the
way
to
Pennsylvania.
At
3:00
P.M.
on
Saturday,
August
11,
the
temperature
in
Philadelphia
hit
100.6
degrees.
There
was
no
air-conditioning.
Trains
were
hot.
Suits
were
black
wool.
Dresses
were
taffeta,
mohair,
gabardine.
Carriages
had
black
canvas
tops,
black-enameled
bodies.
Passengers
roasted.
Horses
glistened.
That
same
Saturday,
thirty
people
in
New
York
City
died
of
heat
prostration.
Three
children
died
when
they
fell
from
fire
escapes
where
they
had
hoped
to
find
a
breeze.
A
high-pressure
zone
stretched
from
the
Midwest
far
into
the
Atlantic
and
halted
the
flow
of
air
over
much
of
the
nation.
There
was
no
breeze
to
find.
"The
air
near
the
surface
of
the
earth
became
superheated,"
wrote
Prof.
E.
B.
Garriott,
the
Weather
Bureau's
chief
forecaster
at
the
time.
"Considered
as
a
whole,
the
month
of
August,
1900,
was
the
warmest
August
on
record
generally
from
the
upper
Mississippi
Valley
over
the
Lake
region,
Ohio
Valley,
and
Middle
Atlantic
States."

Which
meant
the
heat
embraced
most
of
the
nation's
population.
Everyone
shared
in
the
suffering.
What
made
the
heat
wave
exceptional
was
not
the
maximum
temperature
recorded
from
city
to
city,
but
the
sheer
persistence
of
the
heat.
Springfield,
Illinois,
reported
the
longest
hot
spell
in
twenty
years:
twelve
consecutive
days
with
temperatures
of
90
or
higher.
The
men
at
Weather
Bureau
headquarters
suffered
deeply
as
the
mercury
hit
or
surpassed
96
degrees
seven
days
in
a
row.
In
August,
mean
temperatures
in
Albany,
Atlantic
City,
Baltimore,
Chicago,
Cincinnati,
Erie,
New
York,
and
Philadelphia
were
the
highest
they
had
been
since
the
bureau
began
keeping
formal
records
in
1873.

In
Galveston
there
was
heat
and
rain.
From
mid-July
to
mid-August,
a
succession
of
tropical
squalls
swept
from
the
Gulf
and
deluged
Galveston.
In
one
twenty-four-hour
period,
the
city
got
fourteen
inches
of
rain.
Some
streets
flooded.
Little
boys
converted
tubs
to
boats
and
sailed
downtown.
A
horse
drowned.
Total
rainfall
for
that
storm
alone
was
sixteen
inches
in
forty-eight
hours,
five
inches
greater
than
Galveston's
previous
record
set
in
September
1875
when
a
hurricane
struck
Indianola
on
Matagorda
Bay,
150
miles
down
the
Texas
coast.
In
Paris,
Texas,
lightning
demolished
a
tree.
Ten
billion
joules
of
energy
leaped
to
a
porch
ten
feet
away
and
knocked
five
children
unconscious.
Crickets
swarmed
Waco.
The
streets
crunched.
Bugs
heaping
under
arc
lights
halted
trolleys.
Squads
of
citizens
used
unslacked
lime
and
coal
oil
to
drive
the
bugs
away.
The
fire
department
deployed
hoses.

The
waters
of
the
Gulf
got
hot.

OVER
THE
NIGER,
the
colliding
winds
veered
and
arced.
Thunderstorms
of
great
violence
purpled
the
sky.
A
huge
parcel
of
air
began
circling
slowly,
far
too
high
for
anyone
on
the
ground
to
notice.
The
powerful
Saharan
wind
swept
it
west
toward
the
Atlantic
as
a
wave
of
turbulence,
thunderstorms,
and
driving
rain.

Within
this
"easterly
wave,"
moisture-freighted
air
rose
high
into
the
troposphere,
the
first
layer
of
sky
and
the
realm
where
all
weather
occurs.
The
air
cooled
rapidly
as
it
pierced
colder
and
colder
layers
of
atmosphere
and
encountered
lower
and
lower
pressure.
The
lower
the
pressure,
the
more
the
air
expanded.
As
it
expanded
it
cooled.
It
continued
to
rise
but
less
than
a
mile
above
the
earth
crossed
a
threshold,
and
a
phase
change
occurred.
The
air
got
so
cold,
it
could
no
longer
retain
the
water
it
carried.
The
vapor
condensed
en
masse,
as
if
at
the
tap
of
a
conductor's
baton.
The
resulting
droplets
were
so
tiny
they
remained
suspended
in
the
rising
air.

The
updrafts
pushed
the
droplets
higher
and
higher
at
up
to
one
hundred
miles
an
hour.
At
four
miles
above
the
ground
the
droplets
froze,
and
the
rising
air
became
filled
with
snowflakes
and
shards
of
ice.
Men
on
the
ground
saw
blossoms
of
cotton
with
flat
gray
bottoms
that
marked
the
altitude
where
condensation
had
begun.
Children
saw
camels,
rabbits,
and
cannon
fire.
The
clouds
bloomed
before
their
eyes.
Cells
within
grew
and
quickly
expired.
Some
cells
smoked
into
the
sky
like
Christmas
rockets.
Others
became
massive
Gibraltars
of
condensed
water,
Cumulus
congestus;
some
rose
higher,
Cumulonimbus
calvus.
In
the
pillars
that
reached
the
top
of
the
troposphere,
temperatures
fell
to
100
degrees
below
zero.
Tiny
hexagonal
mirrors
of
ice
drifted
from
the
peaks
in
lovely
translucent
veils,
or
"virga."

Something
powerful
and
ultimately
deadly
occurred
within
these
clouds.
As
the
water
rose
and
cooled
and
condensed,
it
also
released
heat.
In
the
sky
over
Africa
in
August
1900,
trillions
upon
trillions
of
water
molecules
began
breathing
tiny
fires.
This
heat
propelled
the
air
even
higher
into
the
atmosphere
until
the
cloudtops
flattened
to
form
Cumulonimbus
capillatus
incus.
Incus
meaning
"anvil,"
the
name
too
of
an
anvil-shaped
bone
in
the
human
ear.
These
were
thunder-heads.
"Convection."
Higher
up,
the
strongest
clouds
penetrated
the
stratosphere.
Soon
an
army
of
great
thunderheads
was
marching
west
along
the
horizon,
watched
closely
by
the
captains
of
British
ships
sailing
down
the
African
coast
with
fresh
troops
for
the
Boer
War.
Seventy
to
eighty
such
waves
drifted
from
West
Africa
into
the
Atlantic
every
summer,
some
dangerous,
most
not.
The
captains
knew
them
less
as
weather,
more
as
geography
—
something
to
watch
to
fill
the
long
hours
at
sea.
At
dawn
and
dusk,
the
distant
clouds
warmed
the
sky
with
color.
Rain
smudged
from
their
bottoms
in
fallstreaks.
Frozen
virga
drifted
from
their
glaciated
tops.
When
the
light
was
just
right
or
a
squall
was
near,
the
clouds
formed
an
escarpment
of
black.
Frigate
birds
sidelit
by
the
sun
drifted
in
the
foreground
and
flecked
the
sky
with
diamond.