The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 made landfall on the city of Galveston, Texas on September 8, 1900. It had estimated winds of 135 mph (215 km/h) at landfall, making it a Category 4 storm on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale. Storms of the Century, #4 – 1900 Galveston Hurricane: Part 1. The Weather Channel. Retrieved on December 18, 2007.

The hurricane caused great loss of life with the estimated death toll between 6,000 and 12,000 individuals;Weems, John Edward. Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Handbook of Texas Online. Retrieved on December 18, 2007. the number most cited in official reports is 8,000, giving the storm the third-highest number of casualties of any Atlantic hurricane, after the Great Hurricane of 1780 and 1998’s Hurricane Mitch. The Galveston Hurricane of 1900 is to date the deadliest natural disaster ever to strike the United States. By contrast, the second-deadliest storm to strike the United States, the 1928 Okeechobee Hurricane, caused approximately 2,500 deaths, and the deadliest storm of recent times, Hurricane Katrina, claimed the lives of approximately 1,800 people.

The hurricane occurred before the practice of assigning official code names to tropical storms was instituted, and thus it is commonly referred to under a variety of descriptive names. Typical names for the storm include the Galveston Hurricane of 1900, the Great Galveston Hurricane, and, especially in older documents, the Galveston Flood. It is often referred to by Galveston locals as The Great Storm or The 1900 Storm. There is existing film of the damage caused by the storm, which is considered the oldest motion picture film of a real-life occurrence surviving today, and was filmed by Thomas Edison"s employees.