1900 Galveston hurricane
The Great Galveston hurricane made landfall on September 9, 1900, near Galveston, Texas. It had estimated winds of at landfall, making the cyclone a Category 4 storm on the modern day Saffir–Simpson Hurricane Scale.
The hurricane caused great loss of life, with a death toll of between 6,000 and 12,000 people; the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of deaths or injuries of all Atlantic hurricanes, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and Hurricane Mitch in 1998. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is the deadliest natural disaster to strike the United States. This loss of life can be attributed to the fact that officials for the Weather Bureau in Galveston brushed off the reports because the city had "weathered them all" and they did not realize the threat. The second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the San Ciriaco hurricane of 1899, caused around 3,400 deaths.
List of Atlantic hurricane records
Owing to their intensity, the strongest Atlantic hurricanes have all attained Category 5 classification. Hurricane Opal, the strongest Category 4 hurricane recorded, intensified to reach a minimum pressure of 916 mbar (hPa; 27.05 inHg), a pressure typical of Category 5 hurricanes. Nonetheless, the pressure remains too high to list Opal as one of the ten strongest Atlantic tropical cyclones. Presently, Hurricane Wilma is the strongest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded, after reaching an intensity of 882 mbar (hPa; 26.05 inHg) in October 2005; this also made Wilma the strongest tropical cyclone worldwide outside of the West Pacific, where seven tropical cyclones have been recorded to intensify to lower pressures. However, this was later superseded by Hurricane Patricia in 2015 in the east Pacific, which had a pressure reading of 872 mbar. Preceding Wilma is Hurricane Gilbert, which had also held the record for most intense Atlantic hurricane for 17 years. The 1935 Labor Day hurricane, with a pressure of 892 mbar (hPa; 26.34 inHg), is the third strongest Atlantic hurricane and the strongest documented tropical cyclone prior to 1950. Since the measurements taken during Wilma and Gilbert were documented using dropsonde, this pressure remains the lowest measured over land.