Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
■ Labor Day hurricanes have an ugly history in Florida, dating to 1935.
Hurricane Dorian is forecast to strike Florida as a major storm on Labor Day.
If it does, it won’t be the first hurricane to ruin the national holiday that’s celebrated on the first Monday of September.
At least 25 hurricanes have barreled onto shore over past Labor Day weekends since 1851, data from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration shows. Seven of those slammed into Florida.
The last hurricane to make landfall during Labor Day weekend was Hurricane Hermine. The storm smacked into Florida’s Big Bend in 2016 as a Category 1.
Other recent storms that touched land include 2010’s Hurricane Earl, which skimmed the East Coast before landing in Nova Scotia. Before that, Hurricane Gustav came ashore in Louisiana as a Category 2.
The holiday arrives during peak hurricane season in the Atlantic, when some of the most intense systems have developed. Here is look back at those destructive storms:
The Great Labor Day Hurricane
On Sept. 2, 1935, an unnamed storm, the most intense Category 5 system to strike the U.S. coastline, barreled across the Florida Keys. Packing 185 mile per hour winds, the hurricane destroyed every structure in the upper Keys.
This storm became known as the Great Labor Day Hurricane because the naming of hurricanes didn’t start until 1953 from lists originated by the National Hurricane Center. The World Meteorological Organization now maintains and updates the list of names.
The Great Labor Day Hurricane killed about 500 people, among them were 259 World War I vets who were constructing the Overseas Highway and residing in government camps.
The system was said to be so powerful that it sandblasted clothing off people.
The hurricane’s storm surge of 18 to 20 feet above sea level pummeled trees and buildings on Matecumbe, Islamorada and other nearby Keys. The system also destroyed Henry Flagler’s railroad, a lifeline between Key West and the mainland.
Hurricane Frances
With a span the size of Texas, Hurricane Frances pounded Martin and Palm Beach counties over the 2004 Labor Day weekend. With winds up to 105 miles per hour, the system brought torrential rains and dumped 13 inches in parts of the state.
The storm also left more than 4.5 million without power in Broward and other counties.
The hurricane stripped roofs off homes, left the sides of the Tiara Condominium in Singer Island without an exterior and chopped up the Lake Worth Pier into three pieces. One McDonald’s sign in Vero Beach was so crumpled that it no longer resembled the golden arches.
The storm also created knee-high flooding in parts of West Palm Beach and collapsed a part of Interstate 95 near Lake Worth.
Frances caused 47 deaths in the United States with 37 of them in Florida.
Hurricane Elena
Described as an unpredictable fickle system because of twists in its path, Hurricane Elena was the fifth named storm of the 1985 season. The category 3 storm developed in the Caribbean and moved into the Gulf of Mexico before making landfall near Biloxi, Mississippi, on Sept. 2.
Because it moved parallel to the coast before landfall, the hurricane produced storm surges up to 9 feet from Florida to Louisiana, according to the Atlantic Oceanographic and Meteorological Laboratory in Virginia Key. The storm also spawned tornadoes in central Florida and torrential rains.
The 350-mile system forced the evacuation of 1 million people in the state and caused $1 billion in damage. Four deaths from fallen trees, car accidents and heart attacks were attributed to Elena, according to the National Hurricane Center.
Hurricane David
Hurricane David was described as South Florida’s most unwelcome guest of the 1970s. With winds between 96 and 110 mph, the hurricane passed between Miami and Bimini and then skirted off the coast of Palm Beach County on Sept. 3, 1979 before making landfall.
Although it spared most of the county, Jupiter and Singer Island were hit the hardest. Winds collapsed the Lake Worth broadcasting tower of radio station WJNO and toppled the steel support structure of the Palm Beach Jai-Alai fronton in Mangonia Park.
The hurricane peeled off the sheet-metal roof from a West Palm Beach storage building.
Thousands of homes lost power. The storm caused several million dollars in damage to the Palm Beach County area and more than $50 million in damage throughout the state.
A handful of storm-related deaths from heart attacks and an electrocution to car accidents were reported.