We treat the world like nothing of importance or note happened before about 1945. Entire fleets have been sunk by storms, probably record storms. But since we didn’t have a way of categorizing, it’s as if it never happened. Do you think the Mongol fleet that was going to invade Japan, or the Spanish Armada were sunk by CAT 3 storms? Probably not.
A storm in the Pacific in WWII sank US destroyers. Here’s an excerpt from a writeup on that.
“The Navy Department Library
Typhoons and Hurricanes: Pacific Typhoon at Okinawa, October 1945
On 4 October 1945, a typhoon was spotted developing in the Caroline Islands and tracked as it moved on a predictable course to the northwest. Although expected to pass into the East China Sea north of Formosa on 8 October, the storm unexpectedly veered north toward Okinawa. That evening the storm slowed down and, just as it approached Okinawa, began to greatly increase in intensity. The sudden shift of the storm caught many ships and small craft in the constricted waters of Buckner Bay (Nakagusuku Wan) and they were unable to escape to sea. On 9 October, when the storm passed over the island, winds of 80 knots (92 miles per hour) and 30-35 foot waves battered the ships and craft in the bay and tore into the quonset huts and buildings ashore. A total of 12 ships and craft were sunk, 222 grounded, and 32 severely damaged. [for listing of vessels] Personnel casualties were 36 killed, 47 missing, and 100 seriously injured. “
Sometimes the storms actually save people:
Kamikaze (the devine wind that saved Japan from the Mongol invasion TWICE!
On August 15-16, 1281, a typhoon struck the Japanese home island of Kyushu, sinking and scattering a Mongolian fleet bent on invading Japan. A previous invasion effort by Kublai Khan seven years before had met a similar fate. This time the typhoon raged for two days, and many ships of the invasion fleet were flat-bottomed barges ill-suited to rough sea conditions. An estimated 4000 ships were destroyed with the loss of 100,000 soldiers.
The Japanese saw divine intervention in these two storms and called them “kami kaze” (神風) or “divine wind”. During World War II, the nickname “kamikaze” was applied to Japanese suicide pilots in the hopes that they would repel the American fleets as the typhoons had done with Kublai Khan’s.