We got spared again this year. No time is good to be complacent. Hurricane season is just 5 months away.

There are images below of Lake Worth following the devastating 1928 Hurricane, for example, a “house tossed like a football”. Read the comment left by Capt. Wm. S. Stafford (Ret.); he references the sobering Lloyd’s of London report on the Herbert Hoover Dike which surrounds Lake Okeechobee:

“Much of the geophysical history of that time period are still visible around the lake. In 2003 I spent 2 days in my Jeep Wrangler driving the circumference of the lake looking for and finding the historic structures (ie old wooden navigation locks, parts of the old levee system, and places where entire towns / villages were washed away, the cemeteries of those taken by the storm, etc.). A visit to the museum in Belle Glade, seeing the memorial statue outside the Belle Glade library, and driving thru Pahokee trying to visualize the damage 75 years before was hard to imagine.”

A “house tossed like a football”, flooded streets, and Lake Ave. with devastated structures are some of the images below. The traditional start of hurricane season is June 1st and peaks from mid-August to late October.

The 1928 Hurricane was a direct hit on cities such as Palm Beach, Lake Worth and Lantana. This was prior to hurricanes being given names. The storm continued towards Lake Okeechobee. In the end over 2,500 people died and this storm remains the second deadliest in U.S. history.

There is a mass grave in West Palm Beach for victims of that storm. Another sad legacy is only Black people are buried there. The White victims were buried elsewhere.

Click images to enlarge.

Images courtesy of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration.