![]() ![]() At least 257 veterans and 228 civilians died in the winds and storm surge of that horrifying evening. The train ended up pushed off its tracks by the storm miraculously, everyone on board survived, but the train had not yet reached hundreds of the most vulnerable workers. Superiors recognized the potential for disaster if a hurricane were to strike, but as “Storm of the Century” recounts in agonizing detail, a series of miscues-ranging from slack holiday schedules to telephone miscommunications to obstructions along the railway track to simple inertia-meant that a rescue train ran hours later than it should have. At the Keys, they were housed in hastily built barracks and tents that stood no chance of surviving a Category 5 hurricane. Many veterans of World War I had struggled to find work and deal with postwar life, and the Great Depression hit them particularly hard. (This interview with author Willie Drye hits many of the main points.) Hundreds of veterans had been deployed to the Keys to build the most difficult sections of the highway that now runs the length of the island chain, from Key West to Miami. The most heartbreaking parts of the saga are vividly told in “Storm of the Century: The Labor Day Hurricane of 1935” (National Geographic, 2002), which I reviewed for Weatherwise magazine. The rescue train derailed by the 1935 Labor Day hurricane before it had a chance to rescue the hundreds of veterans stationed on the Keys. Image credit: NOAA Hurricane Research Division.įigure 4. Leonard Povey used to investigate the 1935 Labor Day hurricane in the world’s first known “hurricane hunter” flight. Drawings of the Curtis Hawk II aircraft that Capt. Povey found the hurricane further north than expected, and a hurricane warning was issued for the Keys at 4:30 pm, just a few hours before the hurricane struck full force.įigure 3. ![]() Leonard Povey, volunteered to carry out what is believed to be the first-ever hurricane-hunter flight, approaching the storm on Monday afternoon in an open-cockpit Curtis Hawk II aircraft. An American “barnstormer” pilot with the Cuba Army Air Corps, Capt. Persistence forecasting suggested that the storm’s west-southwest motion would take it to the north coast of Cuba, but there was little sign of its approach there on Monday morning. Weather Bureau, could only surmise from nearby surface stations how quickly the storm was developing and how its motion was evolving. As a result, forecasters at a brand-new Hurricane Warning Center, established that year in Jacksonville, Florida, by the U.S. No satellite monitoring was available in 1935, and ships avoided tropical cyclones for good reason. The storm’s rapid development combined with several other factors to produce the human tragedy that resulted. Weather Bureau for September 4, 1935, showing the Labor Day hurricane two days after it struck the Keys. Track of the 1935 Labor Day hurricane.įigure 2. The 1935 hurricane went on to skirt the west coast of the Florida peninsula before accelerating northeastward, reentering the Atlantic off the Virginia coastline and producing rains that topped 16” in Maryland.įigure 1. (Dropsondes released by reconaissance aircraft produced sea-level pressure measurements of 882 mb on October 19, 2005, during Hurricane Wilma, and 870 mb on October 12, 1979, during Typhoon Tip). This remains the lowest value ever measured by a ground-based station in a tropical cyclone in the Western Hemisphere. As the hurricane barreled across the Keys on Monday night, local weather observer Ivar Olsen measured 26.35” (892 mb) with a barometer that was later tested and proven reliable at the Weather Bureau. Brushing the south end of Andros Island, it headed toward the north coast of Cuba before angling unexpectedly rightward and intensifying with astonishing speed as it approached the Keys, passing over the very warm waters of the Florida Straits. The compact Labor Day hurricane of 1935 developed very rapidly from a system that was classified as a tropical storm less than two days before landfall in the Keys. The strongest landfalling hurricane on record in the Western Hemisphere brought Category 5 winds and a terrifying storm surge to the upper Florida Keys on the late evening of Monday, September 2, 1935. workers, a group of World War I veterans toiling to improve life on the Florida Keys lost their lives in one of the great workplace tragedies of U.S. Eighty years ago, on this federal holiday that recognizes U.S. As Tropical Storm Grace struggles in the Atlantic (see below), today offers a chance to commemorate the victims of a much more devastating cyclone. ![]()
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