GOM Ripe for Development..of some kind... 1926 Miami Hurricane and My Son Levi's Birthday ;)

Not much to talk about today in the tropics. It's been that way for a while. Edouard is out to sea doing his thing. There is moisture in the GOM from a cold front that  needs to be watched for development. Another tropical wave that was being watched is trying to slip in under the is moving Westish but a bit high. The Upper Level Low anchored over FL and Bahamas is trying hard to keep tropical development under wraps.

The picture looks more tropical than it is in reality. It is in reality a sign of winter moving into the tropics.



There are models being run on the wave out near Africa to the far left of the above image.

If you look at just one picture...one image everything looks tropical. Loop the loops and you see how much interference there is out there and if the Fins were able to protect their so so quarterback he wouldn't throw so many interceptions and have so many incompletions. Just saying...

One image doesn't tell the whole story.

There is no tropical storm in the GOM....the wave by Africa is possibly going to develop but the path out to sea is not set in the waves.

There are waves trying to move west into the Caribbean and Atlantic ...

....but they are running up against negative features.

I could go into deep detail in the meteorological explanations... but the reality is it's not happening.

It is possible something close in to South Florida will develop in some fashion and ride up along the coast. But if is it tropical or just a low riding a cold front.

More interesting to me this week has been looking back at the hurricane that was Miami's Hurricane.

Again remember images do not tell the story. The 1926 Great Miami Hurricane was the defining moment in Miami History. It was not the death knell that so many history writers dramatically write. It was a hard slap in the head, a punch that made you hit the ground hard and then... Miami got up and put it all back together again.

Images do not tell the story.

These are the images you see when you put in "1926 Miami Hurricane" but they do not tell the story.

It's like if you had a webcam watching someone you would think you know what is going on with their life. Perhaps you have a friend go by and start up conversation and think you know what is going on. Wrong. You know only the tip of the iceberg and you aren't getting the warm pulse of life that is the real story. You don't know the secrets.

Here's a secret I'll tell.

This picture shows a Biscayne Blvd wiped clean and a Bayfront Park covered in sand and big barges that the storm surge delivered onto the park rudely. Wrong. The park was just being built and the park created a buffer zone for downtown Miami between the beautiful Biscayne Bay and the sometime skyscrapers.

Had the park not just been built and NOT FINISHED... the barges would have slammed into those buildings and it would have been a whole lot harder to clean up the mess... the death toll higher as it was further north up on the Bay where there were shanty town style collections of poorly built houseboats where people lived.

Made that image large so you can see the windows are blown out of he buildings. The few palms there were there are ripped apart... the barges landed there not in the lobby of those beautiful old buildings where people lived and hid in bathtubs during the raging night.

Yes... Miami was a mess... and then.... the people who lived in Miami, the hard rugged working people who helped make Carl Fisher and George Merrick's dreams come into reality...went about rebuilding the paradise that was a bit battered but not lost. The real Miamians who lived here all year not the ones who came and went for three months in the winter on Miami Beach.

Real Miamians are tough and happy creatures who get to enjoy the warm tropical sunshine almost every day of the year. Even the days when it rains... most of the day is sunny and bright. None of those totally depressing gray weeks that you get further up the coast when a cold front comes down and stalls out and struggles to keep pushing and every day is just gray... with a few moments of Autumn sunshine peaking through...

The best book ever written about the 1926 Miami Hurricane was by a man who went through it and wrote notes in his diary about it. Reading those notes is like walking back through time through the dark, wild night of the storm... a drive through the eye and miraculously getting back to his house, French Doors blowing out... taking refuge in a Model T Ford as many did and the aftermath

BUY IT... read it...feel it...experience it...

http://www.amazon.com/Florida-Hurricane-Disaster-1926-Reardon/dp/0914381040

Note Miami Land Dealers were getting BAD press up north in the late summer of 1925. News of swamp land being sold and sold again and again and flipped faster than a condo on Biscyane Blvd today. Laws were passed regulating investments and the winter season of 1926 was a dud way before the first drop of rain began to fall on South Beach.

Wrong..not true. It's more magical Miami to blame it on the hurricane than legislation that was put into place to stop the selling of swamp land to unsuspecting people in Ohio. But it makes a great story. It becomes a legend. The hurricane that stopped the BOOM... the boom died in the winter of 1926 before the hurricane in the September of 1926.

True.... the January season of 1926 was disappointing and the late bloomers who got in too late on the boom were having problems selling Opa Locka and Fulford-By-the-Sea (North Miami Beach now..) and forget about that dream of islands in the Bayt that would connect the Venetian Islands to Miami Shores. All that was left was some pilings off of what would become the Julia Tuttle Causeway where pelicans would watch the sunset...and still do.

Sadly somewhere in the mess of my boxes of history photos of Miami Beach... I have the map for that causeway. If I find it I'll post it. For now.. believe me and it was before there was the Julia Tuttle Causeway.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isola_di_Lolando


Ghostly quality to this old footage as there is no music or sound...but in the end there is the Great 1926 Miami Hurricane and the aftermath...



A year later in 1927 Miami Beach was hosting speed races again. Yes... they were still cleaning up but the bay was as beautiful as almost always...



In the early 1930s when there was no work up north in the construction business Miami was alive and kicking building the brand new, streamline modern hotels on Ocean Drive.

Architecture and Miami... what a history.

http://www.mimoonthebeach.com/pdfs/Architect%20Biographies.pdf

http://miami.curbed.com/archives/2013/05/29/henry-hohauser-lives.php

Note that when nothing was going on anywhere in the US regarding investment...South Beach was in the middle of a building boom. Five years after the "Killer Hurricane" Miami Beach was alive and money was flowing.

I know because my grandfather was one of those men who came south in 1935 for work and stayed. Yes, his wife was a Floridian trapped up north with a cigar store slash ice cream shop on the Boardwalk. She went up north from Tampa one year to visit her sister and married a Russian Immigrant who was struggling for work up north... but who found all the work he wanted in Miami. As the story goes he drove down with a friend to work on the dome of a synagogue being built on Miami Beach and once here got on the phone and called up his wife Mary and said "I'm so sorry I didn't realize how beautiful it was here, now I know why you missed Florida so much" and in less than a month they were living on Miami Beach ... back home in Florida or as she used to say FLAHR-DUH.

Secret? He came during the 1935 Hurricane in the Florida Keys. The wind was fierce in Miami and he told her he had to hold onto a palm tree to stand up straight during the height of the storm... but it didn't deter him from moving South to the land of the Sunshine.

Next time you look at the old Art Deco hotels on South Beach...

..know they were built during the height of the depression.

No depression in Miami in the early 1930s... or mid 1930s... or late 1930s..

1939 great footage from a family film... I keep thinking I went to school with someone with that last name. Anyway... 1939... Miami looking beautiful as always... (except for those rare days after a Category 4 Hurricane and by the way... 1926 was the only Category 4 hurricane that hit Miami directly as Andrew hit Homestead as anyone in South Dade will tell you....)




1955 The sun reigns again over Miami



The main street of Coral Gables doing just fine in the Florida sunshine in 1955... 30 years after the 1926 Miami Hurricane tore it up badly.

2014.
Coral Gables is as beautiful as George Merrick knew it would be...


Coral Gables.
Biltmore Hotel.





Back to the tropics....yes there is an Invest for the newest wave that rolled off of Africa...I'm just more blown away by the 1926 Miami Hurricane that did not blow Miami away but that made it a stronger, more stubborn... beautiful city.




It's rolling...but it may roll away...Fay may be in love with Edouard and follow him out to sea.. or maybe not.........

And, because no blow about South Florida would be right without a song from Jimmy Buffett..




Tomorrow I'll talk about the tropics more or maybe Sunday. I do think some tropical system will form and find it's way into our area.. maybe the Jewish High Holidays. Old Jewish saying in Miami... hurricanes and the holidays always go together.

Spoiler alert... the 1926 Great Miami Hurricane came on the Day of Judgement Yom Kippur..

This post is in honor of my son's birthday actually.

My son Levi Meyer, who lives out in Southwest Miami and who is very involved with Coconut Grove Chabad and sells homes in Coral Gables and all over Miami is from my figuring the 5th generation of my family that is in the real estate business. NO ONE knows Miami like he does or the real estate business. It's in his genes... trust me.

My Great-Great Grandfather bought and sold land here and in NJ. Invested in land

My great Uncle sold land in Tampa... Anna Maria Island and Holmes Beach.

My grandfather built homes on Miami Beach, Coral Gables, Miami... on his own and with the Mackle Brothers on large projects. His next project was Key Biscayne, but he died of a heart attack. Before he died he drove across the Rickenbacker Causeway with my mother to show her where there was going to be a city one day...  He was right.

My father was President of South Florida Real Estate Appraisers and taught Real Estate in College here in Miami.

I sold real estate... my brother is a real estate appraiser in South Florida.

Levi sells real estate.

How may Realtors do you know who know South Florida so organically ..so intrinsically so genetically?

It's his birthday today.

Happy Birthday Levi.
https://www.facebook.com/levimeyerre
(he doesn't know I'm writing this... spoiler alert.. I'm going to tell him after I post it...)

http://www.levimeyer.com/22666/dsp_agent_page.php/175250

Give him a birthday present... buy a house ;) Hopefully in the Gables or that one he has out in the Redlands for sale...

Keep it going strong...

And, then there is his baby brother Zalmy who wants to become an architect in Miami...

And here's a  picture of me at my wedding...my 2nd wedding some what tipsy and giving Levi a lecture. I told him to get married... marry his girlfriend...have children.. be happy. And.. know what? He listened to me... and did...

On his wedding day... on Biscayne Bay at a friend's beautiful home... (home was used in final episode of Burn Notice...just saying... ) so Miami Levi.

A year later.... out at a party with his beautiful wife..

Stunning beautiful wife... a Miami girl... stunning pregnant...

and the bris of a their baby Benjamin Miles... 

at Chabad of the Grove

son on the far right is the architect student... wink

That's life in Miami...when you listen to your Momma ;)

Besos Bobbi

Ps... watch the area in the Gulf of Mexico...

Musical treat... a year...

http://flipagram.com/f/Im4JSOprsN