During the decade of the 20s, South Florida was experiencing a tremendous land boom. In 1925, Miami was the fastest growing city in the United States with a population of 300,000. But the market turned soft in 1926. A July hurricane that threatened the area made the market even more jittery. On September 16, 1926, a major Cape Verde hurricane was north of the Antilles, moving in the general direction of Florida. The real estate market could not stand negative publicity, so The Miami Herald chose not even to refer to the storm as a hurricane.
In Miami, Weather Bureau Office Chief Richard Gray was receiving sketchy information. The morning of September 17th found bright blue skies over Florida with no sign of the hurricane. Nothing else was heard from the hurricane until that night, when it struck Grand Turks Island in the Bahamas. The Weather Bureau in Washington issued hurricane warnings for Florida after 11 p.m. that night, almost as an afterthought. Gray received the warning by teletype and immediately hoisted the familiar hurricane warning flags, made difficult by the winds that were already blowing strongly. The warning had come too late. The hurricane had strengthened rapidly during the evening hours and had winds of over 130 mph. Most residents had already gone to bed.
Winds reached hurricane force by 1 a.m. The eye reached Miami Beach around 6:10 in the morning. Miami was in the eye for about 45 minutes and the barometer bottomed out at 27.61 inches, which was a new U.S. record at the time. During the calm, residents poured into the streets and a stream of cars started across the causeway from Miami Beach to the mainland, much to the dismay of Gray. He yelled to people on the streets that the other side of the hurricane was yet to come. Sustained winds were measured at 123 mph for 5 minutes and 138 mph for 2 minutes and may have been higher, since the anemometer was destroyed at 8:12 a.m. A storm surge of 11.7 feet above normal devastated much of the beach and city. A total of 243 people died and damage in 1926 dollars was $12 million.
Researchers have studied past hurricanes and have calculated what their damage would be in modern dollars. According to Chris Landsea of NOAA’s Hurricane Research Laboratory, the Great Miami Hurricane would have been the most destructive before Katrina. The 1926 storm was weaker that Hurricane Andrew of 1992, but was much larger. Calculations are that damage today from a storm like the 1926 hurricane would have been a staggering $80 billion. There was a tremendous outcry in Florida about the poor warnings from Washington.
