Hints of a System (#98L) Forming in the Atlantic & the Great Miami Hurricane Arrives 100 Years Ago Tonight

SEPTEMBER 17, 1926

The giant hurricane was plowing through the Bahamas that Friday morning. Nassau reported winds increasing through the morning and into the early afternoon. But the last word from the Bahamian capital came at 1:00 PM. During the critical afternoon and evening hours, as the storm drove closer to Miami, the communications link was lost.

Forecasters in Washington were blind. They knew the storm was powerful, but they didn't know if it was continuing toward Florida or veering to the north.

After the fact, these maps show the 1926 estimates of where the hurricane tracked. Notice they simply drew a big LOW. They had no way to know exactly where the center was.

The modern estimate is that at 8:00 AM, winds on the right side of the circulation were sustained at 145 mph, and that the storm would maintain that strength up to landfall the next morning south of Miami.

The front page of the morning Miami Herald confidently reported that the "Storm of great intensity… (was) not expected to touch Florida." Which, of course, was speculation based on day-old information.

At noon, after the paper was published and based on the morning data from Nassau and some ship reports, the Weather Bureau issued a Northeast Storm Warning for the southeast Florida coast and Keys – essentially what we call a tropical storm warning today. The bulletin said, "This is a very severe storm…every precaution should be taken for destructive winds Saturday morning, especially Jupiter to Miami."

By that afternoon, the Miami Daily News was on the story. Nobody could miss the fact that a storm was threatening. In those days, the words tropical storm and hurricane were used more or less interchangeably. They didn't have strict definitions in public communications as we understand them now.

And on page 4, there was a 1926 version of a forecast cone. It was a prescient graphic. The arrows pointed directly to the impact zone.

As afternoon turned to evening, no data arrived from the storm zone, and the barometer at Miami was only slowly falling. There was no way to definitively know if the powerful hurricane was coming towards Florida or not. Finally, based on instinct, extrapolating from the previous positions, the Weather Bureau issued a Hurricane Warning at 11 PM. Hurricane flags were flying at the Port of Miami at midnight.

Telephone operators were mobilized to spread the Hurricane Warning message to smaller cities north and south of Miami. It's unclear how many people got the news through that mechanism though. More likely, the sound of the wind and rain that suddenly increased as the calendar switched to September 18 was what got their attention.

The hurricane whose destruction would be compared to the great San Francisco earthquake of 1906 was underway.

SPECIAL LIVE PODCAST TODAY

Join me along with Miami historian Dr. Paul George and University of Miami researcher Brian McNoldy for a special live podcast today at 4:00 PM ET. You can watch on YouTube, Facebook, X, TikTok, Instagram, or LinkedIn.

Send in your questions about the 1926 hurricane or the 2026 hurricane season. I hope to see and hear from you then.

IN THE ATLANTIC IN 2026

The area of low pressure east of Bermuda – tagged Invest 98L by the National Hurricane Center – is better organized, but the message from the various computer forecast models continues to be mixed on whether it will develop.

It’s under hostile upper winds, so the thunderstorms are disconnected from the circulation. If it can pull itself together over the next couple of days, it looks likely to drift south. That's why the NHC is drawing the potential development zone south of the X.

The odds that the system will become at least a tropical depression are currently in the medium range.

A relatively few computer models still show it organizing and eventually pulling north into the open ocean. We’ll see. Bermuda should keep an eye on it.

IN THE PACIFIC

The NHC is drawing two red areas with high chances of development. The one to watch is closest to Mexico. If it develops in a few days, it could eventually track near the Mexican coast.

The remnants of ex-Tropical Depression 15E have a low chance of redeveloping as they track southeast of Hawaii. There is no sign at the current time of a threat to the islands.