From Katrina to Mitch: what have been the worst hurricanes of history

The hurricane razed the earth with winds probably over 200 miles per hour (322 km/h), so loud that people could not hear their own voices. Little was left, except “mud, debris, dead cattle and decomposition corpses.”

After leaving Barbados, the great hurricane passed through Martinica, Santa Lucía and San Eustaquio. Waves up to 7 meters high razed entire villages, and complete fleets of British and French warships – along with the thousands of crew on board – sank at the bottom of the ocean.

The deadliest storm in the history of the United States was the Hurricane of Galveston in 1900. The Gulf of Mexico crossed in early September 1900, reaching category four before whipping Galveston, Texas, on September 6.

“We met so many bodies that I had to move forward with a spicy and take them away … It was the most horrible thing I've seen in my life,” said a surviving fisherman. It is estimated that the storm caused between 6,000 and 8,000 deaths.

Even more deadly were the storms that took place outside the Atlantic basin, where they are known as cyclones or typhons instead of hurricanes.

The 1970 Bhola cyclone hit the Northeast of India and what was then Eastern Pakistan (the current Bangladesh).

He brought with him a dizzy cyclonic dizziness of 10.5 meters. In total, it is believed that up to 500,000 people died from that cyclone.

How the damage caused by hurricanes is measured depends on the perspective. For people who lose properties, livelihoods and loved ones, the storm that has just hit them was devastating.

But if analyzed only in terms of the number of destroyed properties, two hurricanes stand out: Katch and Mitch.

The main reason why Hurricane Katrina occupies the place of the most expensive hurricane in history is the magnitude of the destruction left by the southeast of the United States. It is estimated that between 217,000 and 300,000 homes were destroyed or were uninhabitable after the storm. Winds of up to 140 miles per hour (225 km/h) whipped southeastern Louisiana.

The cyclonic swells reached between 7.6 m – 8.5 m above the normal level of the tide along the Mississippi coast, and between 3 m – 6.1 m above the normal level of the tide on the southeast coast of Louisiana. In New Orleans, the waves and the marejada cyclonic broke the dikes that were supposed to protect the city.

In total, almost 80% of the city was flooded with waters that reached up to 6 meters deep, while 59 tornadoes generated by the storm spread more damage to eight states.

This impact made Hurricane Katrina the most expensive hurricane ever registered in the United States, with a total of US $ 201.00 billion in damage, adjusted to inflation of 2024. After Katrina, the second most expensive was Hurricane Harvey, which caused US $ 160,000 million in damages when it touched land in Texas and Louisiana.

But almost seven years before, another hurricane caused an almost as large destruction as that of Katrina.

In the United States, Hurricane Mitch left relatively lower damage: 645 homes in Florida were destroyed by the storm when he crossed the Gulf of Mexico from the Yucatan Peninsula, in October 1998. By then, however, he had already caused the worst ravages.

A week earlier, Mitch had hit Honduras, sweeping entire communities while leaving a wake of destruction throughout Central America. This storm was a monster: a category five hurricane that is still among the most intense ever registered.

By the time he arrived in Honduras, he had weakened a category one hurricane, but when he touched earth he was practically parked, downloading huge amounts of rain. The floods and landslides that followed left between 10,000 and 19,000 dead in Honduras, Nicaragua, Guatemala, Belize and El Salvador.

At least 200,000 homes were demolished or seriously damaged by the storm. Only in Honduras, 70,000 houses and 92 bridges were destroyed, while all villages were engulfed by mud rivers that descended from the mountains. The UN estimated that, in total, more than half a million people lost their homes.

It could be thought that the most powerful storms are those that cause more damage and more lives are charged. But it is not always the case.

Hurricane Patricia was a storm number 24 of the 2015 hurricane season and formed near the Gulf of Tehuantepec, off the southern coast of Mexico. The favorable conditions caused tropical storm to hurricane of category five in just 24 hours.

On October 23, the maximum wind speed of Patricia sustained for 10 seconds reached 221 miles per hour (356 km/h), measured from an airplane in flight (on the ground speeds or 338 km/h) were recorded. It was the highest speed ever recorded in the Western hemisphere and as intense as one of the most powerful storms in history: the 1961 typhoon.

Patricia's journey crossed relatively little populated areas of Mexico, avoiding large cities, which limited the number of deaths. In addition, he weakened drastically after touching the Mexican coast, although he reached the ground with registered wind speeds of up to 265 km/h.

The effect of the mountain land of Mexico weakened Patricia even more and, for October 24, it had practically disappeared.

Despite its intensity, the number of deaths was surprisingly low: only two people died directly because of the storm, with four other indirect deaths, according to the Oceanic and Atmospheric National Administration of the United States (NOAA).

This week, Hurricane Erin became the first Hurricane of the Atlantic of 2025, bordering the continental coast of the United States and leading meteorologists to issue warnings to surfers on traffic lights. It is believed that it is one of the hurricanes that has intensified more quickly in such an early date in the season.

The strongest storms tend to occur later in the year, after September 1. Erin went from hurricane of category one to category five in just over 24 hours, before weakening again to category two.

The rapid intensification is defined as an increase in the maximum sustained winds of a tropical cyclone of at least 30 knots (35 mph) in a period of 24 hours, according to the United States National Meteorological Service. These rapid intensification hurricanes can be particularly dangerous, since people have less time to prepare.

Erin is not the only storm that has quickly intensified in recent years. In 2024, Hurricane Milton became the most quick storm that fastest from tropical depression to hurricane of category five.

That same year, Hurricane Beryl broke a record being the earliest Atlantic storm, in June or early July, to intensify from a tropical depression to become a hurricane.

Meanwhile, in 2023, hurricanes Lee and Jova surprised scientists with their sudden intensification, especially considering that they did it during a El Niño phenomenon, which normally reduces hurricane activity in the Atlantic.

Of course, hurricanes have always intensified at different rhythms. Two other Atlantic hurricanes -félix in 2007 and Wilma in 2005- are also notable for their specially rapid intensification.

But investigations have shown that, in general, intensification rates have increased significantly in recent years due to global warming, a trend that will continue.

Everything is due to the greatest heating of the sea surface on which these storms are formed and displaced due to climate change. Erin, for example, crossed waters that, on average, were 1.1 ° C warmer due to climate change.

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