One hundred years ago, the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States made landfall in Galveston, Texas. The 1900 Galveston hurricane took at least 6,000 lives and perhaps as many as 10,000.

Hurricanes, like other forces of nature, will always pose a threat. But thanks to a century of improvements in scientific monitoring and in our understanding of how the Earth works, the loss of life from natural disasters has dropped dramatically. The USGS is working with our partners to improve our ability to predict coastal change caused by severe storms. With this information, communities can be better prepared for nature’s extremes.

USGS is committed to providing the scientific information America needs to build safer communities, so that tragedies like Galveston need never happen again.

Chip Groat
Director

Links to information on hurricanes:

USGS:
Hurricane and Extreme Storm Impact Studies:
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricanes/

Images of flooding from Hurricane Floyd:
http://cindi.usgs.gov/ncflood/ncflood.html

Information and links on Hurricane Mitch: http://cindi.usgs.gov/events/mitch/cent_amer.html

Forecasting hurricane occurrence, economic and life losses:
http://coastal.er.usgs.gov/hurricane_forecast/

Fact sheets on hazards including hurricanes:
http://water.usgs.gov/wid/index-hazards.html

NOAA
Information on Galveston hurricane:
http://www.noaa.gov/galveston1900/

National Hurricane Center:
http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/index.html

FEMA information on hurricanes: http://www.fema.gov/fema/trop.htm

American Red Cross
Preparing for a Hurricane: http://www.redcross.org/disaster/safety/hurrican.html

The Galveston hurricane:
http://www.redcross.org/news/galveston/index.html

As the nation's largest water, earth and biological science and civilian mapping agency, the USGS works in cooperation with more than 2000 organizations across the country to provide reliable, impartial, scientific information to resource managers, planners, and other customers. This information is gathered in every state by USGS scientists to minimize the loss of life and property from natural disasters, to contribute to the conservation and the sound economic and physical development of the nation's natural resources, and to enhance the quality of life by monitoring water, biological, energy and mineral resources.

In-depth information about USGS programs may be found on the USGS home page at http://www.usgs.gov. To receive the latest USGS news releases automatically by e-mail, send a request to listproc@listserver.usgs.gov. Specify the listserver(s) of interest from the following names: water-pr; geologic-pr, geologic-hazards-pr; biological-pr; mapping-pr; products-pr; lecture-pr. In the body of the message write: subscribe (name of listserver) (your name). Example: water-pr joe smith.