"Wasn't That a Mighty Storm" is an American folk song concerning a hurricane that destroyed Galveston, Texas. It was revived and popularized by Eric Von Schmidt and Tom Rush in the 1960s.
The song started as a spiritual and was first recorded by John A. Lomax in 1934 at Darrington State Farm (now the Darrington Unit), a prison near Sandy Point, Texas, sung by "Sin-Killer" Griffin who claimed authorship.[1] Since this is the first known appearance of the song, it is not clear whether the song dates to the very famous 1900 Galveston hurricane, which (as of 2010) remains the deadliest natural disaster in United States history, responsible for an estimated 6,000 to 12,000 fatalities. Although as popularized in the 1960s the song itself references the year 1900, it also includes the line "Now Galveston had a seawall"[2] which in 1900 it did not, the main reason for the extensive death toll. This may be a clue that the song lyrics were written or at least standardized after the 1915 Galveston hurricane by which time a seawall had been built.