In the Dark Ages of meteorology, when forecasting was more art than science, a monstrous storm was quietly building steam in the Bay of Bengal. The 1970 Bhola cyclone, a behemoth of a storm, was about to unleash its fury on the unsuspecting coast of East Pakistan (now Bangladesh). With winds of up to 120 km/h and a storm surge of over 10 meters, the cyclone made landfall on November 12, 1970, bringing with it a catastrophic deluge that would claim the lives of an estimated 250,000 to 500,000 people, making it the deadliest tropical cyclone in recorded history.