Tropical Storm Barry (2007)

When the Mississippi bursts through its levees, be they natural or man-made, the opening is called a “crevasse.” For most of New Orleans’s history, the term was a synonym for disaster. In 1735, a crevasse-induced flood inundated practically all of New Orleans, which at that point consisted of forty-four square blocks. Sauvé’s Crevasse was a breach

were a storm as powerful as the Labor Day hurricane of 1935 to strike Key West today, they say, the 22,000-person island would likely be wiped as clean of life and property as the Matecumbes were years ago. Were such a storm to strike a major population center such as Miami, property damage would likely outstrip Andrew one hundred times over.)