1919 Florida Keys hurricane

The 1919 Florida Keys hurricane passed 30 to 40 miles south of Key West around midnight on September 9, 1919, and its center crossed the Dry Tortugas, 65 miles west of Key West.¹ NHC's best track puts the Dry Tortugas landfall at 0700 UTC on September 10 as a Category 4 hurricane with 130-knot (150 mph) winds and a central pressure of 927 mb.² At Key West, where the wind cups blew away, the Weather Bureau estimated peak winds of 105 to 110 mph and about 13.4 inches of rain.¹ Gusts blew out walls of solid brick buildings, probably no structure on the island escaped damage, and three people drowned. Damage there was estimated at $2 million, about $800,000 of it at the naval air station.¹

The storm crossed the Gulf of Mexico and made landfall between Baffin Bay and Corpus Christi, Texas, on September 14 as a Category 3 hurricane with 115 mph winds and a central pressure of 950 mb.³ NHC's best track puts that landfall at 2100 UTC (3 p.m. CST).² NWS Corpus Christi gives a storm surge of 16 feet at Corpus Christi, 13 feet at Port O'Connor and 9 feet at Galveston.³ Water rose to 11.5 feet in downtown Corpus Christi, where debris piled up to 16 feet high, and the surge destroyed homes on North Beach and swept hundreds of people into Nueces Bay.³ Nearly all docks and buildings at Port Aransas were wiped out, and the large oil tanks there were destroyed.¹ Damage in Corpus Christi was estimated at $20 million. The official death toll is 284, which NWS Corpus Christi calls a significant undercount, putting the likely toll at 600 to 1,000.³