Isaac's Storm

Joseph is Isaac's younger brother who works under him at the Weather Bureau station in Galveston at the time of the storm. Before arriving in Galveston, Joseph drifts between jobs for many years, working as a teacher, a machinist, and a salesman. In Galveston, he earns a "reputation as being just about the only salesman in town who did not drink" (68). Though a newcomer to meteorology when Isaac hires him at the station, Joseph takes to it with zeal. Early in his tenure, the Weather Bureau's Central Office organizes a competition to identify the agency's best forecasters. While both Joseph and his brother apply, only Isaac reaches the top five, lighting the flame of a rivalry between the two men which will later grow into full-on estrangement after the events of the storm.

The day of the storm, Joseph largely follows Isaac's lead, though he is not shy about his belief that the family should evacuate Isaac's house for higher ground. When the house capsizes, Joseph grabs two of Isaac's daughters nearest to him and leaps out of a now-horizontal window, saving their lives. While the exact preconditions of Joseph's estrangement from Isaac are unknown, there is evidence that the argument over whether to stay or evacuate irrevocably scarred the brothers' relationship. For example, in a 1922 account of the storm, Joseph "goes to great, almost comical, lengths to avoid using Isaac's name or even to acknowledge him as his brother" (269). In one of Isaac's accounts, he only refers to Joseph as his "assistant" rather than by name. In 1955, Joseph dies at the age of 84, just one week after Isaac dies.

Moore is the head of the US Weather Bureau's central office in Washington, DC at the time of the Galveston hurricane. From the start of his tenure in 1891, Moore generates a significant measure of tension and discord within the Bureau, "but Moore believed tension was good. The system, he told Congress, helped explain why Weather Bureau employees had to be committed to insane asylums more often than employees of any other federal agency" (72).

Sensitive to the Bureau's reputation in an era when most Americans view weather forecasts with skepticism or outright scorn, Moore exerts an enormous amount of control over his satellite offices, insisting that only headquarters approve storm warnings and even going to so far as to ban the word "tornado." Meanwhile, Moore works with his subordinates in the Bureau's West Indies branch in Havana to undermine the work of Cuba's local meteorologists, even though Cubans are pioneers in the field and possess more firsthand knowledge of hurricanes than anyone in the Americas. At the time of the Galveston hurricane, a ban on all weather-related cables sent by Cuban meteorologists is in place, approved by Moore. Rather than listen to the Cubans in the days leading up to the storm, Moore puts unfailing trust in the opinions of his scientists in the Central Office, who all fail to accurately predict the storm's size, strength, and trajectory.

After the storm, Moore puts a misleadingly positive spin on the Weather Bureau's role in providing appropriate and timely warnings in advance of the Galveston hurricane. He remains in his position atop the Weather Bureau until 1913, when the Justice Department uncovers a scheme of his to use agency resources for personal and political gain in his campaign to become Secretary of Agriculture.

Dr. Young is one of the other central characters Larson follows through the storm. Dr. Young is the secretary of Galveston's Cotton Exchange and a meteorology-enthusiast with a strong measure of expertise for an amateur. He lives one block North of Isaac with his wife and children, who are away for the summer but scheduled to return the weekend of the storm. At dawn on the morning of the storm, Dr. Young hears the same deep-ocean swells as Isaac and watches as waves crash over the streetcar trestle. He later recalls, "I was certain then we were going to have a cyclone" (140). Almost immediately, he sends word via telegram to his wife to remain in San Antonio until the storm passes. 

Despite this prudent warning, Dr. Young himself is excited to ride out the storm in his home: “Young was a member of that class of mostly landlocked men who believed God put storms on earth expressly for their entertainment" (179). As the storm surge reaches 15 feet and winds soar above 100 miles per hour, Dr. Young realizes his mistake. Certain that his house is set to crumble, Dr. Young removes the hinges from a second-floor door and uses it as a raft when his home finally collapses into the water. He becomes lodged in a massive pile of rubble where he remains for eight straight hours until the storm finally subsides.