<Tr> <Th> Areas affected </Th> <Td> Lesser Antilles, Puerto Rico, Hispaniola, Jamaica, Cuba, Turks and Caicos Islands, Bahamas, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, New York, Eastern Canada </Td> </Tr> <Tr> <Td_colspan="2"> Part of the 1900 Atlantic hurricane season </Td> </Tr> <P> The Great Galveston Hurricane, known regionally as the Great Storm of 1900, was a Category 4 storm, with winds of up to 145 mph (233 km / h), which made landfall on September 8, 1900, in Galveston, Texas, in the United States . It killed 6,000 to 12,000 people, making it the deadliest hurricane and natural disaster in U.S. history . </P> <P> The hurricane appears to have started as an atmospheric trough from West Africa, causing unsettled weather in the Caribbean, and emerging into the Florida Straits as a tropical storm on September 5 . Owing to contradictory forecasts, the people of Galveston felt no alarm until the official hurricane warning of September 7 . The next morning, a storm surge of 15 ft (4.6 m) washed over the long, flat island - city, which was only 8 ft (2.4 m) above sea level, knocking buildings off their foundations and destroying over 3,600 homes . </P>

What was the largest hurricane to hit the us