The storm\u2019s widespread devastation effectively ended Florida\u2019s 1920s land boom and ushered in an early local start to the Great Depression.\u00a0<\/p>\n
While the storm did not permanently cripple the University of Miami, which had been founded in 1925, it did strike a serious blow to the fledgling institution, damaging its early buildings, forcing a temporary halt to campus construction projects and delaying the start of classes.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The University, however, pressed on, opening its doors for classes in late October of that year. And the storm, known as the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, actually inspired the school\u2019s iconic \u201cHurricanes\u201d nickname.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In what is believed to be a first, McNoldy, using a meticulous reconstruction method of parameters that are not part of the 1926 storm\u2019s official historic record, has created a series of new wind field maps<\/a> for the storm.<\/p>\n \u201cFilling in the many gaps began with some estimates of the symmetric extent of the tropical storm winds when environmental surface pressures were known in addition to the storm\u2019s central pressure,\u201d McNoldy said. \u201cEmpirical relationships helped to create some eyewall size estimates. Times with very sparse data were carefully blended between times with better estimates, and asymmetries were introduced based on the storm\u2019s forward speed, direction and latitude.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n He collaborated with John Knaff, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) meteorologist whom he has known for nearly 30 years and is an expert in tropical cyclone size estimation.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cTo my knowledge, this is the first visualization of the 1926 storm\u2019s entire wind field over its lifetime,\u201d McNoldy said. \u201cThe new information is a best-guess of the quadrant-specific extent of tropical storm-force winds and the eyewall size every six hours for 11 days. Recognizing the uncertainties surrounding the storm size estimates, it fits our sparse observations rather well. By all accounts, this hurricane was very large, in contrast to something like Hurricane Andrew, which was extremely small.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThe issue has to do with how hurricane wind speeds change over land,\u201d Nolan explained. \u201cThe wind speeds we hear on TV and on the internet are calibrated for over the ocean, where the surface is fairly smooth compared to land surfaces. As hurricanes move over land, the wind near the ground is reduced substantially. So, I provided Brian with a formula to convert the over-ocean wind speeds to something more accurate over land.\u201d<\/p>\n Nolan\u2019s formula requires an estimate of how rough the surface is based on the type of land, such as farmland, suburban homes, thick trees or tall buildings. \u201cI created a dataset using modern land use information, but then we arbitrarily reduced the roughness parameter substantially in urban areas because tall and large buildings did not exist in Miami back in 1926,\u201d Nolan said. \u201cIt\u2019s not perfect, but it\u2019s much better than using ocean wind speeds and also much better than using the roughness of the modern era.\u201d<\/p>\n McNoldy\u2019s maps are not part of NOAA\u2019s Atlantic Hurricane Database Reanalysis Project, an ongoing effort to correct errors, remove biases and uncover undocumented storms in the official North Atlantic hurricane database.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHurricane reanalysis is important for several related reasons,\u201d said Rosenstiel School professor of atmospheric sciences Sharan Majumdar<\/a>. \u201cIt allows us to continue to advance our understanding of hurricane structure and impacts, to identify any variability in hurricane activity across prior years and decades, and to learn lessons from previous storms such as the 1926 hurricane to build a society and infrastructure that are more resilient to future hurricanes.\u201d<\/p>\n So, just how helpful McNoldy\u2019s new wind field maps will be is still to be determined. \u201cI can provide the edited storm data file to the National Hurricane Center for consideration, and perhaps the historical record of the storm could eventually be updated with the new values,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n What is clear is that the project, done out of what McNoldy calls \u201ca desire to create something new and as realistic as possible for the storm\u2019s historic landfall centennial,\u201d could generate renewed conversation on the impact of the 1926 storm and how forecasting has improved in its aftermath.<\/p>\n \u201cAdvances in hurricane forecasting over the past century are immeasurable,\u201d McNoldy said. \u201cIn 1926, aircraft reconnaissance of hurricanes was 20 years away, computer modeling capable of forecasting hurricanes was 30 years away, and routine weather satellite coverage was 50 years away. Forecasts relied on sparse observations far away that suggested where a storm might be and perhaps a crude estimate of its intensity. The future track of the storm would have been deduced from large-scale weather patterns, with enormous errors. Intensity forecasting as we know it today did not come into existence until the 1990s.\u201d<\/p>\n Just how powerful was the Great Miami Hurricane of 1926? Using data collected from Hurricane Hunter reconnaissance flights, satellites and computer weather models, researchers can measure the overall destructive potential of a hurricane\u2014a scientific metric called its \u201cintegrated kinetic energy,\u201d or IKE, which is measured in units of energy called terajoules (TJ).\u00a0<\/p>\n While such scientific instruments did not exist when the 1926 cyclone hit, by McNoldy\u2019s best estimates, the 1926 storm packed approximately six times more energy (170 TJ) than Hurricane King (30 TJ) in 1950 and four times more than 1992\u2019s Andrew (43 TJ) at their landfalls in southeast Florida. \u201cTo put terajoules into perspective, the Hiroshima atomic bomb released about 63 terajoules of energy,\u201d explained McNoldy, noting that the values he referenced for the hurricanes were at the moment of landfall and only for the surface winds.<\/p>\n While a storm of similar size and intensity making a direct hit on the modern Miami of today would very likely result in catastrophic damage, \u201cthere would also be an unprecedented evacuation ahead of it to minimize the loss of life,\u201d McNoldy said.<\/p>\n And in its aftermath, lessons learned and perhaps a new way of building.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cEach of the major hurricanes\u2014whether it\u2019s the 1926 storm, Hurricane Andrew most certainly, Hurricane Katrina, or superstorm Sandy hitting the Northeast\u2014are events that tested the physical environment,\u201d said Denis Hector<\/a>, an associate professor in the School of Architecture<\/a>, who initiated the first National Science Foundation Hurricane Hazard Research Conference post-Andrew and participated in the Mississippi Renewal Forum Charrette after Hurricane Katrina.<\/p>\n \u201cWe design buildings, structures and cities based on assumptions about the environmental loads and the environmental conditions that they have to withstand,\u201d he continued. \u201cAnd with such natural disasters, the precautions and safety features that we incorporate into buildings is the one time they\u2019re actually tested in real-world conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n Hector noted that the 1926 hurricane was the impetus for the beginning of the reinforced masonry system of construction that is still in practice today in South Florida. \u201cAnd Hurricane Andrew directly drove the creation and mandate of modern impact-resistant windows and stricter Florida building codes,\u201d he said. \u201cThe fabric of the city that experienced Hurricane Andrew is enormously different than the fabric of the city we have today. We have many new high-rise buildings with a lot of glass up in the air that have been built to very thoughtful building codes. How will the city fare when another powerful storm eventually hits? It will be a full-scale test to see how well the code predicts safe behavior.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The first storm warning for the Miami area wasn\u2019t issued until only a few hours before the powerful…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":402555,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[225,227,226],"class_list":["post-402554","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-hialeah","tag-hialeah","tag-hialeah-headlines","tag-hialeah-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402554","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=402554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/402554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/402555"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=402554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=402554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=402554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"1926](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1926-hurricane-estimated-surface-wind-2-embed-940.webp\")
Produced using a parametric model that utilizes observed storm characteristics such as intensity, radius of maximum wind, radii of tropical storm-force wind and track, the maps show a surface wind swath over the hurricane\u2019s lifetime. The colors on the maps correspond to the Saffir-Simpson rating system, which classifies hurricanes based on their maximum sustained wind speed.\u00a0<\/p>\n![\"1926](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/09\/1926-hurricane-estimated-surface-wind-embed-940.webp\")
A high-resolution dataset of a parameter called \u201croughness length,\u201d created by David Nolan<\/a>, a professor in the Rosenstiel School\u2019s Department of Atmospheric Sciences, was critical to the successful completion of the maps.\u00a0<\/p>\n