The Deadliest Hurricane Seasons in US History, Ranked

No other Atlantic season has done what 1893 did: produce two separate hurricanes that each killed at least 1,000 Americans (NOAA AOML). In late August the Sea Islands Hurricane pushed a storm surge across the Georgia and South Carolina low country and killed an estimated 1,000 to 2,000, most of them freed people farming the coastal islands. Six weeks later the Chenière Caminada Hurricane erased a Louisiana fishing village and killed roughly 2,000 more. By combined direct-death toll, 1893 ranks second only to 1900 — a distinction that a storm-by-storm list hides completely.

A single storm again dominates. Hurricane Maria devastated Puerto Rico in September 2017; a George Washington University study commissioned by the territory later put the death toll near 2,975, most of them in the months of blackout and collapsed healthcare that followed landfall. Add Harvey — which stalled over Houston and dropped up to 60 inches of rain, killing about 68 directly — and Irma’s roughly 90 US deaths, and 2017 is the deadliest US-and-territory hurricane season of the modern era. It sits just behind 1893 here, and the reason is a judgment call we make explicit below: Maria’s toll is largely a modeled excess-death estimate, while 1893’s is a direct count.

The 1928 hurricane drove Lake Okeechobee over its southern rim and flooded the farm towns below it, drowning an estimated 2,500 to 3,000 people — most of them Black migrant laborers whose deaths went uncounted, and unmarked, for decades. It is second on NOAA’s official list of the deadliest US hurricanes, and its toll is the reason Florida built the Herbert Hoover Dike around the lake.

Katrina killed about 1,392 people when the levees failed in New Orleans — the deadliest US hurricane since 1928 — and Rita, Wilma and Stan added hundreds more across the Gulf and the Caribbean. Basin-wide the 2005 season’s fatalities reached roughly 3,468, and it remains, adjusted for inflation, the costliest hurricane season the United States has ever paid for. It is also the season that exhausted the 21-name list and rolled into the Greek alphabet.

The September 1919 hurricane crossed the Florida Keys and tracked the length of the Gulf before flattening Corpus Christi, Texas. Its death toll — estimated between 600 and 900 — is so uncertain because a large share of the victims were aboard ships that simply never reached port; ten vessels and their crews were lost in the Gulf.

On September 21, 1938 a hurricane sprinted up the East Coast at forward speeds near 60 mph and struck Long Island and southern New England with almost no warning — forecasters had expected it to curve out to sea. It killed about 682 people and remains the deadliest hurricane in New England’s history, in a region that rarely takes a direct hit.

The 1935 Labor Day Hurricane hit the Florida Keys with a landfall pressure of 892 millibars — still the most intense hurricane ever to strike the United States. It killed roughly 408 people, among them hundreds of World War I veterans working on the Overseas Highway, whose evacuation train arrived at Islamorada minutes too late and was swept off the tracks.

The Great Miami Hurricane came ashore as a Category 4 on a city that had almost no memory of hurricanes and had never been tested by one. It killed about 372 people and burst the 1920s Florida real-estate bubble overnight. Normalized to today’s coastal development, NOAA estimates a repeat would be among the costliest disasters in US history.

What makes 1954 stand out is not one storm but three. Carol (Aug) and Edna (Sept) both raked New England, and Hazel (Oct) tore up the East Coast from the Carolinas to Canada, killing about 95 people in the US after killing roughly 1,000 in Haiti. Together they made 1954 one of the most destructive East Coast seasons of the 20th century and helped launch modern hurricane research.