The Four Worst Hurricanes of All Time

By definition, a hurricane is a tropical storm with winds above 74 miles per hour (119 kilometres per hour). The systems occur all over the world. In the Western Atlantic and Eastern Pacific Oceans, they are called hurricanes. In the Indian Ocean and South Pacific, they are called cyclones and in the Western Pacific, they are called typhoons. The following hurricanes aren't necessarily the deadliest of all time, or the costliest. But they all sit at the intersection of property damage, powerful winds and human tragedy.

1935 Florida Keys Labor Day Hurricane

This Category 5 storm, considered the strongest to hit the U.S. in the 20th century, brought 200-mph (320-kph) winds and soaking rain to the upper and middle Florida Keys and killed approximately 400 people. More than half of the dead were World War I veterans who had been working on building a highway. The storm also struck well before advances in weather tracking technology that predict where a storm might end up. This left residents largely in the dark as the hurricane approached. Many of the victims had waited anxiously for an evacuation train that never came – it was washed away from the track.

Katrina

On Aug. 26, Katrina looked like a hurricane that was fizzling out, but it began rapidly strengthening to Category 5 levels over warm water. By mandatory evacuation order was issued for New Orleans. As the now-Category 3 hurricane reached the city, water topped over its systems of levees causing them to break and the streets to flood. Eventually, 80 percent of the city was underwater. Katrina left residents who couldn't or chose not to evacuate stranded in their homes with waters rising around them. Forty percent of hurricane-related deaths were from drowning.

Mitch

The slow-moving hurricane seemed to pause once it reached Honduras in October 1998, pouring up to 4 inches (10 centimeters) of rain an hour for two days, causing mudslides and deadly flooding along the way. With approximately 11,000 people dead (and thousands more missing), Mitch is the second-deadliest hurricane on record and the worst to hit the Western Hemisphere in more than 200 years. The storm caused more than $5 billion in damage in Honduras, where much of the country's infrastructure and crops were completely destroyed. Nicaragua was also devastated by Mitch, losing 2,000 people in one mudslide alone.

The Great Hurricane of 1780

This Great Hurricane of 1780 blasted its way through the Caribbean, killing approximately 22,000 people. Among the dead were British and American soldiers. While there isn't much data on record regarding the hurricane's speed or rainfall, what we do know is that the storm bombarded several Caribbean islands, including Barbados, Martinique and St. Lucia over six days in October. One local observer wrote that the hurricane stripped bark off of trees, which has caused some to speculate the winds must have topped 200 mph (320 kph). This massive storm is considered the deadliest hurricanes of all time.