Florida is no stranger to extreme weather. With the Atlantic Ocean on one side and the Gulf of Mexico on the other, the US state can be battered from all directions by storms, hurricanes, tornadoes and waves. Since Florida became a state in 1845, records for the worst natural disasters have been set, broken and broken again. And due to the effects of climate change, that’s not going to change anytime soon.
Read on to explore the catastrophic weather events that have rocked Florida over the last 150 years...
A near-tropical climate, Florida is nicknamed 'the Sunshine State' and has long been a favoured destination for those seeking balmy weather. You’re unlikely to see much ice or snow, but it does happen occasionally. Over the winter of 1894-95, two spells of freezing temperatures caught Floridians totally by surprise, beginning with a super-cold snap in late December that saw the city of Orlando reach -8°C (18°F). While the frigid conditions were hard enough on people’s lives, they were even harder on their livelihoods – namely citrus farming.
By far the largest producer in the country, Florida relied on its citrus crop. But the first wave of the Great Freeze killed the oranges, grapefruits, lemons and limes on the branches, before the second wave in February killed many of the trees themselves. Production plummeted, as did the value of agricultural land, leading many farmers to leave the state for other citrus-growing areas, like California. It wasn't all bad news, though, as the freeze led to increased citrus farming in southern Florida, which escaped the lowest temperatures.
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Only once has a temperature of below 0°F (-17.8°C) been recorded anywhere in Florida – during the Great Arctic Outbreak of 1899, in the state capital of Tallahassee. Described by the US Weather Bureau as "a freeze that for duration and severity stands unparalleled", the severe winter, caused by an Arctic blast of cold air, affected most of the eastern states, killing crops, livestock, wildlife and more than 100 people.
While other states endured greater hardships than Florida, the fact that snow fell as far south as the Sunshine State goes to show the severity of the blizzard. The palm trees of Fort Myers buckled under snow drifts and ice covered infrastructure across the state – like this water tank in Pensacola. Coming shortly after the Great Freeze, the blast added to the burden for citrus farmers. Even in warmer Miami they had to wrap up orange trees or light small fires within the groves to protect crops from the cold.
More than freezes and blizzards, the type of extreme weather that impacts Florida the most – and will appear most regularly on this list – is hurricanes. The Great Miami Hurricane was among the most destructive – a Category 4 (the second-highest classification) that hit in September 1926. The hurricane had battered the Bahamas on its way across the Caribbean, but the Miami area still had little warning when it was hit by strong winds, rain and a 10-foot-high (3m) storm surge which flooded several city blocks.
The 1926 hurricane left 372 people dead in the US alone, as well as 6,000 injured and more than 40,000 homeless. Miami was still a young city, and the tumult left roughly a third of its population without a roof over their heads. It also caused more than $100 million in damage, while studies suggest that if the same storm were to hit in the 21st century that figure could be $100-200 billion (£79-157bn). Things were only going to get worse for Florida, with another record-setting hurricane just two years later.
The Okeechobee Hurricane is not only the worst natural disaster in Florida’s history, it is the second deadliest hurricane in the history of the United States, behind only the Galveston Hurricane of 1900. Before making landfall at West Palm Beach on 16 September 1928, the Category 4 squall rampaged through Guadeloupe and Puerto Rico, killing over 1,000 people. Once in Florida, the worst would be seen some 40 miles (64km) inland, where high winds caused Lake Okeechobee to burst through its protective dikes and flood nearby communities.
The waters of Lake Okeechobee accounted for most of the hurricane's up-to-3,000 fatalities. Many of them were African-American farm workers who were buried in mass graves or cremated on huge pyres, unlike many white victims who were given proper burials. It would also be the surviving poor Black workers who were mostly tasked with recovering bodies and clearing debris. The hurricane's impact on the African-American community inspired novelist Zora Neale Hurston to capture its horrors in her book, Their Eyes Were Watching God.
Barometric pressure is an important reading for hurricanes: the lower the pressure, the stronger the storm. And for five decades the Labor Day Hurricane, which ripped through the Florida Keys in 1935, had America's lowest ever reading – taken by Ivar Olsen while clinging to a tree and watching his house collapse. It was also the first recorded Category 5 (the strongest classification) hurricane to hit American soil. With winds peaking at more than 180 miles per hour (290km/h) and mountainous storm surges, the hurricane killed an estimated 600 people and caused catastrophic damage across the Keys.
As it struck on a federal holiday, the response was slow – with tragic consequences. A relief train sent to evacuate a camp of road workers, mostly World War I veterans, had been late to leave and so was caught by the winds and blown entirely off the track. Although no one died on the train, hundreds of people drowned waiting for relief that would never come. The acclaimed author Ernest Hemingway captured the public mood in the aftermath with his hastily penned essay, Who Murdered the Vets?
"It swept over Florida with terrifying force. Rain fell in torrents and the wind reached a velocity of more than 120 miles per hour,” began one British newsreel on Hurricane Donna. An estimated three-quarters of the buildings in the Florida Keys were destroyed or damaged, crops were lost and a dozen people perished across the state. A man named George Brainard left his home in the relative calm of the eye of the storm and his body was later found over a mile (1.6km) away.
Yet, while still devastating, the Sunshine State escaped Donna’s worst. The Category 4 hurricane’s violent two-week journey had seen it hit Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, Cuba and numerous Caribbean islands, before leaving Florida to wreak havoc on the Eastern Seaboard. In doing so, it became the only storm on record to bring hurricane-force winds all the way up from Florida to New England. The result: the deaths of at least 350 people and nearly a billion dollars in damage.
The year 1964 marked an intense period of hurricane activity in the US. Florida alone was hit hard by three large storms between August and October, named Cleo, Dora and Isbell. It was Dora that would write its place in the history books as the first recorded hurricane to make landfall in the state's northeast, rather than the Keys to the south or the Panhandle to the west. Hitting on 10 September, it swept away buildings, brought torrential rain, knocked out power in Jacksonville for six days and caused around $3 billion (£2.4bn) in damage in today’s money.
The following day, President Lyndon B Johnson, in the midst of a re-election campaign, flew in to survey the destruction and pledge millions in relief effort. Perhaps more surprising visitors, however, were rock and roll megastars The Beatles. Despite the storm, they managed to make it to their scheduled concert at the Gator Bowl in Jacksonville, where 20,000 fans were overjoyed at the distraction. The winds were still so high that Ringo’s drum kit had to be nailed to the stage.
Although only a Category 1 hurricane when it made landfall in June 1972, having headed north from the Gulf of Mexico, Agnes is still remembered as one of the costliest storms in US history. It caused billions of dollars in damages as it ploughed its way through eight states. In Florida, Agnes sparked no fewer than 18 tornadoes, and it was these that were primarily responsible for the nine deaths in the state. Heading north, Agnes picked up strength and hammered Virginia, Pennsylvania, New Jersey and New York.
Torrential rainfall caused rivers to burst their banks which led to severe flooding, with the towns of Wilkes-Barre and Elmira hit especially hard. Tens of thousands of homes and businesses were wrecked, and by the time it was over in July a total of 122 people had died. Following these tragic events, the decision was taken to retire the name 'Agnes' so that it would not be used again for future hurricanes. This marked the first time a Category 1 name had been retired.
As one of only four hurricanes to hit the US at Category 5 intensity, it should be no surprise that Andrew quickly became the costliest storm in the country’s history. The estimated total damage reached $26.5 billion (£21bn) – a figure only surpassed by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. Striking Florida on 24 August 1992, Andrew’s power was not in its reach but its ferocity. Miami-Dade County suffered its full force, with more than 25,000 homes destroyed and a further 100,000 damaged.
The hurricane wiped out 90% of all mobile homes in the county, and left up to a million residents without power. It was also here that many of the 65 fatalities occurred, although that figure could have been even higher had Andrew moved north to the city of Miami rather than losing strength and heading towards Louisiana. In 1993, Florida was at the mercy of the weather again, when the so-called 'Storm of the Century' battered the Big Bend region on its way from the Gulf of Mexico up towards Canada.
It looks like something out of a disaster movie: a terrifying, whirling column of air powering its way through the downtown of a heavily populated American city. Yet this was the scene in Miami on 12 May 1997. A tornado touched down in the heart of the city with wind speeds in excess of 100 miles per hour (161km/h). Roofs were blown off, cars toppled and trees uprooted, causing half a million dollars in damage, while those working in skyscrapers could do nothing but watch as it slowly approached.
Thankfully, the Great Miami Tornado did not cause any fatalities. Classified as an F1 (the lowest tornado classification), it lasted 15 minutes before heading out across Biscayne Bay and dissipating over the Atlantic. But the photos taken by Miami residents and the footage captured by a local TV station’s rooftop camera caused shock around the world. It may be worth noting that the blockbuster movie Twister, starring Bill Paxton and Helen Hunt as tornado-chasing researchers, had been released roughly a year earlier.
While the Great Miami Tornado ended up more of a spectacle than a disaster movie, the series of twisters that were unleashed on Florida the following year proved to be much more deadly. Known as 'the Night of the Tornadoes', no fewer than seven touched down during the night of 22-23 February 1998, including three that were classified as F3 on the Fujita scale. Two of these targeted Lake, Orange, Volusia and Seminole Counties.
The third F3 tornado struck around Kissimmee in Osceola County and singlehandedly caused 25 deaths, the most of any twister in Florida history (the previous record was 17 in 1962). In total, 42 people died that night and more than 260 were injured, while some 3,000 buildings were damaged. Florida's trailer parks barely survived. A resident of Ponderosa RV Park in Kissimmee recalled how one mobile home had been picked up and would later be found around four miles (6km) away.
Hurricane Irma set a world record in 2017 by maintaining wind speeds of 185 miles per hour (298km/h) or more for 37 hours – surpassing the 24 hours sustained by Typhoon Haiyan which devastated the Philippines in 2013. Irma's trail of destruction, which resulted in more than 130 deaths, ran through the Caribbean islands of Barbuda (described in the aftermath as "barely habitable"), St Martin, St Barts, Puerto Rico and the Turks and Caicos, before the Category 4 met Florida at Cudjoe Key on 10 September 2017.
Dubbed 'Irmageddon', the storm destroyed buildings, flooded coastal areas and left more than seven million people without power for as long as a week. One resident of Miami, who lived on the 37th floor, described how their entire building swayed in the ferocious winds. Floridians had plenty of time to prepare and seven million were evacuated, but the state ultimately recorded 123 hurricane-related deaths. It also caused tens of billions of dollars of damage.
On 10 October 2018, another Category 5 hurricane made landfall in Florida. This wasn't in the south, where most of the biggest storms hit, but up on the Panhandle in the northwest. Forming over the Caribbean, Michael grew in strength as it crossed the Gulf of Mexico until it boasted winds of 160 miles per hour (257km/h), causing storm surges up to 14 feet (4m) high. It laid waste to Florida’s coastal towns: in Mexico Beach, 1,584 of the 1,692 buildings were reported damaged, with around half totally wrecked.
The hurricane similarly had a huge impact on millions of acres of forested and agricultural land – particularly cotton fields. After Florida it moved up through Georgia, the Carolinas and Virginia, resulting in 59 deaths – 36 of which were in Florida – and $25 billion (£20bn) in damage. To date, it remains the most recent Category 5 hurricane to make landfall on the mainland United States.
"Fort Myers Beach no longer exists." That was the assessment of Florida senator Marco Rubio in the aftermath of Hurricane Ian. The popular tourist spot was flattened when the Category 4 slammed into the state in late September 2022. Some reports suggested that only 3% of the buildings in the region escaped unscathed. Moreover, a chunk of the causeway that connected the Florida mainland with the island of Sanibel was washed away, completely cutting off all vehicle access.
Yet, even though 149 lives were lost in Florida, chiefly from drowning in the storm surges, and property damage totalling more than $100 billion (£78bn) took place across the state, there was reason to be grateful that Ian was not even more devastating. As the hurricane moved across the Gulf of Mexico, pummelling Cuba and leaving the entire island without power, it briefly became a Category 5 hurricane, but had weakened to Category 4 before making landfall in the US.
The 2024 hurricane season made it abundantly clear that extreme weather is showing no signs of abating in Florida. In September, a Category 4 hurricane, Helene, tore through the Big Bend region near Tallahassee, before carrying on through Georgia, the Carolinas, Tennessee and Virginia. Killing more than 230 people, it was the deadliest mainland US hurricane since Katrina in 2005. Recovery is still ongoing, but some estimates put the cost at $50 billion (£39bn), which would make it one of the costliest storms in US history.
Just a couple of weeks later Florida was hammered by another hurricane, Milton, which compounded the death toll and devastation. The intensity and violence of these hurricanes have served to fuel the debate around the consequences of climate change, and whether Florida – and the rest of the world – will have to get a lot more used to such deadly disasters.
Now learn about the deadliest ever natural disasters from across the US