The Great 1919 Florida Keys Hurricane

September 9, 1919 — Residents of Key West and the Florida Keys watched the wind strengthen as a powerful hurricane approached from the southeast.

By the following day, the storm would pass near the island with tremendous force.

There were no weather satellites. No hurricane-hunter aircraft flew into the storm. No radar screens showed its eye. Information moved by ship reports, telegraph, weather stations and human observation.

Yet the people of the Keys understood what was coming.

A major hurricane was bearing down on them.

A Storm Approaches the Florida Straits

The hurricane developed in the tropical Atlantic and moved westward through the Caribbean before passing through the Florida Straits.

The Florida Keys History Center records that by the morning of September 9, Key West was experiencing gale-force winds. Conditions deteriorated as the storm approached, and hurricane-force winds continued into September 10.

At its strongest, the hurricane is estimated to have reached winds near 150 miles per hour, making it a powerful major hurricane.

The center of the storm passed roughly fifty miles south of Key West, but that distance offered little comfort. A large and intense hurricane could still deliver destructive winds, tremendous seas and dangerous storm surge across the island chain.

Key West in 1919

Key West was a very different community from the tourism center familiar today.

The city was an important maritime port with deep connections to Cuba, fishing, cigar manufacturing, shipping and the United States Navy. Vessels moved constantly through the Florida Straits, one of the busiest maritime passages in the region.

Henry Flagler's Overseas Railway still connected Key West to mainland Florida. The extraordinary railroad, completed only seven years earlier, crossed miles of open water on bridges and embankments.

When a hurricane approached, therefore, the danger extended far beyond houses and streets.

Ships, docks, railroad infrastructure, telegraph lines and the region's entire transportation network were exposed.

September 9 — The Wind Builds

As September 9 progressed, conditions worsened.

The Florida Keys History Center's historical chronology describes winds increasing throughout the day. By the next morning, hurricane-force conditions were affecting Key West.

The storm battered buildings, waterfront facilities and vessels. Communications became difficult. Boats sought whatever protection they could find.

For residents, the experience would have been dominated by sound: wind pressing against wooden buildings, rain striking shutters and roofs, waves pounding the shoreline, and debris moving through darkened streets.

Unlike a modern hurricane evacuation, there was little possibility of moving tens of thousands of residents hundreds of miles away by automobile.

For many people, survival meant finding the strongest available structure and waiting.

Before Satellites and Hurricane Hunters

The 1919 hurricane illustrates how dramatically hurricane forecasting has changed.

Today, meteorologists watch tropical disturbances form thousands of miles from Florida using satellites. Computer models estimate possible tracks days in advance. Hurricane hunters measure winds and atmospheric pressure inside storms. Emergency managers can send warnings instantly to millions of phones.

None of those systems existed in 1919.

The United States Weather Bureau relied heavily on surface observations and reports from ships. A hurricane moving through sparsely observed tropical waters could change strength or direction without forecasters knowing precisely what had happened.

Communities such as Key West were therefore among America's most important hurricane observation points.

They were also among the most vulnerable.

The Maritime Disaster

The hurricane's greatest tragedy unfolded at sea.

Ships throughout the Florida Straits and Gulf of Mexico encountered enormous waves and hurricane-force winds. Vessels disappeared, grounded or were damaged.

The steamship Valbanera, carrying hundreds of passengers and crew from Spain toward Cuba, became one of the storm's most famous losses. After being unable to enter Havana harbor during the hurricane, the ship disappeared. It was later found sunk near the Rebecca Shoal area west of the Florida Keys.

There were no survivors from the people still aboard.

The disaster became one of the great maritime tragedies associated with a Florida hurricane.

The Storm Moves Into the Gulf

After passing the Florida Keys, the hurricane did not weaken into insignificance.

It crossed the southeastern Gulf of Mexico and continued toward the northwestern Gulf Coast.

The storm eventually struck Texas near Corpus Christi on September 14, producing catastrophic storm surge and widespread destruction. Hundreds of people died along the storm's path, making the 1919 hurricane one of the deadliest tropical cyclones in United States history.

What Key West experienced on September 9 and 10 was therefore only one chapter in a much larger disaster.

Damage in the Florida Keys

The hurricane caused extensive property and maritime damage across the Keys. Contemporary estimates placed losses in the region in the millions of dollars—a very large sum in 1919.

The Overseas Railway survived the storm and continued operating. That fact is especially notable because another great hurricane would destroy major portions of the railway sixteen years later during the Labor Day Hurricane of 1935.

Key West recovered, as it had after earlier hurricanes and would after later ones.

But the 1919 storm became part of the long history that shaped how Florida learned to understand, forecast and prepare for tropical cyclones.

A Century of Hurricane Science

Comparing 1919 with modern hurricane forecasting shows the enormous progress made during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.

The storm itself has not changed. A major hurricane remains capable of devastating coastal Florida.

What has changed is our ability to see it coming.

Weather satellites now observe every tropical system. Aircraft can fly directly into hurricanes. Doppler radar measures approaching rain bands and winds. Computer models process enormous amounts of atmospheric data. Coastal evacuation routes and emergency plans are established long before landfall.

Those systems were built partly from lessons learned during storms such as the hurricane of 1919.

September 9 in Florida History

On September 9, 1919, Key West stood directly in the path of a developing disaster.

The city survived.

But ships were lost, property was damaged and the hurricane continued across the Gulf toward an even greater catastrophe.

The story belongs to a period when Florida communities faced hurricanes with limited warning and almost no knowledge of what was happening beyond the horizon.

September 9, 1919 reminds us that Florida's hurricane history is also the history of how people learned to see the storms coming.

Sources for Additional Reading

• Florida Keys History Center — September 9 — Key West chronology of the 1919 hurricane and its effects in the Florida Keys.
• NOAA / Monthly Weather Review — Hurricanes of 1919 — Historical meteorological account of the season and storm.
• National Weather Service — 1919 Hurricane — Historical account of the storm's later Gulf Coast impact.

Also September 9: The Stono Rebellion and the Road to Spanish Florida

Also September 9: Hurricane Dora Sends the Beatles to Key West