Florida Hurricane History

I remember a story about about the Labor Day hurricane that struck Florida in 1935. It was a category 5 storm.

The storm surge was twenty feet and obliterated the Keys. The story was about one person who was being washed away by the waves when he was able to grab onto the top of a palm tree and clung to it during a terrifying night.

The 1928 Okeechobee hurricane got its name from what its did to Lake Okeechobee. The winds caused a twenty foot storm surge on the lake, pushing water well inland from the lake. This storm killed over 4000 people in the state.

Hurricane Donna, in 1960, was only a category 3 storm when it hit Florida's west coast. Tampa, St. Petersburg, and Fort Myers had half the population they do today. The storm surge shattered seawalls and swamped the cities.