BBC Audio Desert Island Discs Lindsey Hilsum, journalist.txt

Katrina to Erin: The most extreme hurricanes in history

Hurricanes are roleta francesa truquesincreasingly breaking records for intensity and the destruction they leave in their wake. Here we look at some of the most powerful storms in history.

It is 20 years since Hurricane Katrina barrelled into south-east Louisiana, killing 1,833 people and creating a calamity on a previously unimagined scale. The storm hit on 29 August 2005, leaving most of the city underwater and its population without power, food and shelter.

"My city, New Orleans, has fallen into utter chaos," resident Windi Sebren told the BBC at the time. "My life in New Orleans is over for the time being – I have to start over completely."

Katrina is undoubtedly one of the worst disasters to have hit the United States in living memory. Here we revisit pictures from Katrina and some of history's other powerful and destructive hurricanes.

On the night of 9 October 1780, after a balmy day on the Caribbean island of Barbados, rain began to fall. The next morning a breeze picked up – and by 6pm a hurricane slammed into the island at full force. Known as the Great Hurricane, it remains the deadliest Atlantic hurricane ever recorded. Estimates of the death toll range between 20,000 and 27,500.

The hurricane whipped across the land, with winds of likely more than 200mph (322km/h) that were so loud people couldn't hear their own voices. Little was left but "mud, debris, dead cattle and rotting corpses".

Leaving Barbados, the Great Hurricane moved past Martinique, Saint Lucia, and Sint Eustatius. Waves reaching 25ft (7m) high washed whole villages into the sea and entire fleets of British and French naval ships – along with the thousands of people aboard – were lost to the bottom of the ocean.

The deadliest storm in US history was the Galveston hurricane of 1900. It passed over the Gulf of Mexico in early September 1900, strengthening to a category four hurricane before slamming into Galveston, Texas, on 6 September.

"We kept running into so many dead bodies that I had to go forward with a pike and shove [them] out of the way… it was the most horrible thing I have ever seen," a surviving fisherman is reported to have said. The storm is estimated to have caused between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths.

More deadly storms still have taken place outside the Atlantic basin, where these storms are known as cyclones or typhoons rather than hurricanes. The Bhola Cyclone of 1970 collided with north-east India and what was then East Pakistan (present-day Bangladesh). It brought with it a devastating storm surge of 35ft (10.5m). In total, as many as 500,000 people are thought to have been killed by cyclone.

How you measure the damage caused by hurricanes is a matter of perspective. For the people who lose property, livelihoods and loved ones, the storm that has just swept over them was devastating. But if you examine it purely in terms of the number of properties destroyed, two hurricanes stand out – Katrina and Mitch.

The main reason why Hurricane Katrina ranks as the costliest hurricane in history is the sheer scale of the destruction it left in its wake across the south-east US. It is estimated that between 217,000 and 300,000 homes were destroyed or left uninhabitable by the storm. Wind speeds of up to 140mph (225km/h) careered into south-east Louisiana. The storm surge reached 25-28ft (7.6m-8.5m) above normal tide levels along the Mississippi coast and 10-20ft (3m-6.1m) above normal tide levels along the south-east Louisiana coast. In New Orleans, the driving waves and storm surge smashed through the levees intended to protect the city.

Overall, nearly 80% of the city was inundated with floodwater that reached 6m (20ft) deep while 59 tornadoes propagating from the storm spread further damage across eight states.

This damage made Hurricane Katrina the costliest hurricane on record to hit the US, resulting in a total of $201.3bn (￡148.3bn) in damage, when adjusted for inflation to 2024 US dollars. After Katrina, the second costliest was Hurricane Harvey, which caused $160bn (￡118bn) in damage when it made landfall in Texas and Louisiana.

But nearly seven years earlier, another hurricane caused almost as much destruction as Katrina.

In the US, Hurricane Mitch left behind relatively minor damage – 645 homes in Florida were destroyed by the storm as it swept across the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico in October 1998. By then, however, it had already done its worst.

A week earlier Mitch had slammed into Honduras, obliterating entire communities as it cut a swathe of destruction across Central America. This storm was a monster – a category five hurricane that still ranks as one of the most intense on record.

By the time it hit Honduras, it had weakened to a category one hurricane, but on making landfall it got stuck, hovering over Honduras and dumping huge amounts of rain. The flooding and landslides that followed left between 10,000 and 19,000 people dead across Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador. At least 200,000 homes were demolished or severely damaged by the storm. In Honduras alone, 70,000 homes and 92 bridges were destroyed, with whole villages being swallowed by rivers of mud that swept down mountainsides. The UN estimated that, in all, more than half a million people lost their homes.

You could be forgiven for assuming that the most powerful storms are the ones that cause the most damage and take the most lives. That's not always the case.

Hurricane Patricia was the 24th storm of the 2015 hurricane season, and formed near the Gulf of Tehuantepec off Mexico's southern coast. Favourable conditions meant it grew from a tropical storm to a category five hurricane in just 24 hours.

On 23 October, Patricia's highest wind speed sustained over 10 seconds was 221mph (356km/h), measured from an aircraft in flight (speeds of 210mph, or 338km/h, were measured at ground level). It was the highest speed ever recorded in the Western Hemisphere and as intense as one of the most powerful storms ever recorded, 1961's Typhoon Nancy.

Patricia's path cut through relatively unpopulated parts of Mexico, missing large cities, which limited its death toll. It also dramatically weakened after it hit the Mexican coast, though it made landfall with recorded windspeeds as high as 265km/h (165mph). The effect of Mexico's mountainous terrain further weakened Patricia, and by 24 October it had dwindled to almost nothing.

Despite its intensity, Patricia's death toll was surprisingly small – only two people died directly as a result of the storm, with four additional indirect deaths, according to the US's National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.

This week, Hurricane Erin became the Atlantic's first hurricane of 2025, skirting the US mainland leading forecasters to issue warnings to surfers about rip currents.?It is thought to be one of the most rapidly intensifying hurricanes on record so early in the season. The strongest storms tend to occur later year, after 1 September. Erin went from a category one hurricane to a category five in just over 24 hours, before weakening again to a category two storm.

Rapid intensification is an increase in the maximum sustained winds of a tropical cyclone of at least 30 knots (35 mph) in a 24 hour period, according to the US's National Weather Service. Such fast-intensifying hurricanes can be particularly dangerous, since people have less time to prepare for them.?(Read more about what more rapidly intensifying hurricanes will mean in the future.)

Erin is not the only storm to rapidly intensify in recent years. In 2024, Hurricane Milton became the fastest Atlantic storm ever to intensify from a tropical depression to a category five hurricane. The same year, Hurricane Beryl broke a record as the fastest ever Atlantic storm occurring in June or early July to intensify from a tropical depression to a hurricane. In 2023, meanwhile, Hurricane Lee and Hurricane Jova stunned scientists with their sudden intensification, especially considering they did so during an El Ni?o, which normally suppresses hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

Of course hurricanes have always intensified at different rates. Two other Atlantic hurricanes – Felix in 2007 and Wilma in 2005 – are also noteworthy for their especially rapid intensification. But research has shown overall intensification rates have significantly increased in recent years due to global warming, a trend which is set to continue. (Find out more about?how climate change is rewriting the rules of extreme storms.) It's all down to the warmer sea surfaces these storms pass over due to climate change – Erin, for example, passed over waters that were on average, 1.1C warmer due to climate change.

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