The U.S. National Weather Service was very simple in 1900. They did not have good information on what the storm was doing. As a result, they could not give people advance warnings. Galveston was located on a sandbar island off the coast of Texas. It was only about nine feet above sea level. The population was about 38,000. On the morning of September 8, 1900, nobody knew that 8,000 of that number would be gone by the next day.