Hurricane Harbor: Miami 100 Years Since Great Miami Cat 4 1926 Hurricane. Building Boom Then... Building Boom Now! Nothing Changes....

I saw this picture in my feed today on Instagram and I smiled. First off, look how Miami Beach looked once it had been cleared of mangroves and lots were being laid out in 1920! The building on the island there was the Allison Hospital, it later became St. Francis Hospital. It was the anemometer at the hospital that showed the Great Miami Hurricane was a mighty Category 4 before it blew away, gone with the wind. I guess we will never know if it was stronger than that last recording. But, the record stands in modern time for the strongest direct hit from a Category 4 Hurricane to impact Miami proper, unlike Andrew that rampaged down by Homestead across the distant South Dade suburbs. While most Miami people living there in 1992 will insist they went through a REAL HURRICANE, it was nothing compared to Palmetto Bay and Homestead as it made it's way on to Louisiana and Mississipi!

For old-timers in South Florida the big fear is always the one that comes up and over the Islands and makes it's first real hit on Miami from the ESE as they move WNW across the Atlantic from Africa. Okay, the Bahamas felt it, but this was one mean hurricane. Neither Cuba nor Hispaniola get a chance to weaken it. It was a huge hurricane. It was a slow moving hurricane. It was a wet hurricane! Andrew was small and dry. This one had Cat 4 winds, an eye that sneakily came out at sunrise making all the new settlers to Miami during Boom Days think the storm passed and the dawn broke and the storm was gone. They were wrong. Ps the back side was worse then the front side and everything weaked from the first half, crashed wildy about to the ground often plunging people into the swollen waters that flooded the city. It was very wet, very large and slow moving. The exactly opposite of Andrew.