Weather Bureau station clock · 75th-meridian standard time

Miami, hour by hour

Richard W. Gray’s notes preserve the pressure fall, warning decisions and instrument failures inside Miami’s downtown Weather Bureau office.

Time standard: every time below is 75th-meridian standard time—the local standard time used in Miami in 1926 (UTC−5). Only times stated in Gray’s record or the National Weather Service warning history are shown; missing hourly observations are not invented.

The storm before the storm · September 11–17

The ground was already wet.

The Great Miami Hurricane did not approach a dry landscape. A separate unnamed tropical cyclone—cataloged in the modern NOAA reanalysis as 1926 Storm 6—crossed Cuba, briefly became a minimal tropical storm near the Bahamas, turned west through the Florida Straits and weakened to a depression on September 17. NOAA’s reconstruction says it did not produce tropical-storm-force conditions in southeast Florida, but its moisture coincided with intense local rain and existing Everglades overflow.

September 13–14Across Cuba

The weak disturbance crossed west-central Cuba, described by the contemporary Monthly Weather Review as being of slight intensity.

September 15–16Minimal tropical storm

The system strengthened near the Bahamas, then was forced westward through the Florida Straits.

September 16, 10:10–10:55 a.m.1.20 inches in 45 minutes

Gray’s Miami station notes call the rainfall “excessive.” A second thunderstorm followed from late afternoon into the evening.

September 17Overflow and flood appeals

A contemporary wire report described nearly submerged small farms in northwest Miami and Hialeah and requests for state action.

What can be proved: the cyclone track and intensity come from NOAA’s official HURDAT reanalysis; the 1.20-inch burst comes from Gray’s original Miami meteorological notes. The supplied newspaper clippings add Hialeah, Everglades and Broward-area flood reporting, but the surviving crops do not include newspaper titles or page numbers, so they are shown as research clippings rather than fully cataloged citations.

Newspaper clipping reporting heavy rain, Everglades overflow and flood damage in northwest Miami and Hialeah — **Miami and Hialeah overflow.** Associated Press report dated September 17, 1926; research clipping. The surviving crop does not include the publication title or page number.

Newspaper clipping headlined Dike Breaks, reporting a breach between Hillsboro Canal and North New River Canal — **Broward / lake-shore drainage warning.** Reports a dike break between Hillsboro and North New River canals; research clipping. The surviving crop does not include the publication title, date or page number.

Read NOAA’s 1926 Storm 6 reanalysis ↗Open Gray’s September 16 rainfall record

Animated primary-source sequence

Watch the instruments fail as the pressure collapses.

Barograph trace at Miami from September 17 through 19, 1926, falling to 27.61 inches

Observation ledger

Every recoverable timed observation in one table

Download the observation ledger as CSV

Local time	Pressure	Wind	Weather / station status	Evidence status
Sep. 17, 12 a.m.–10 a.m.	No hourly values stated	No hourly values stated	No unusual conditions noted; steady pressure fall begins at 10 a.m.	Narrative
Sep. 17, noon	—	—	Storm warnings authorized for Miami.	Warning record
Sep. 17, 8 p.m.	Falling moderately	19 mph	Conditions had not yet signaled the violence to follow.	Measured
Sep. 17, 10–11 p.m.	Rapid fall begins at 10 p.m.	Increasing from northeast	Hurricane warnings hoisted about 11 p.m.	Measured + action
Sep. 18, midnight	0.11 in. fall since 10 p.m.	Fresh gale	Heavy rain begins after midnight.	Measured
1:50 a.m.	Falling	41 mph recorded; about 57 mph corrected	Miami Beach telephone service already ending.	Measured + corrected
2:35 a.m.	Falling	About 60 mph true velocity	Conditions worsening steadily.	Corrected estimate
3:00–3:42 a.m.	Falling	Increasing	Miami telephone service ends at 3; rain-gauge top blows off at 3:42 and is lost minutes later.	Instrument failure
4:00–5:00 a.m.	Falling rapidly	80 mph recorded at 5; at least 115 mph corrected	Power lines down; observations by flashlight; instrument shelter blows away.	Measured + corrected
5:30–6:10 a.m.	0.40 in. fall in 40 minutes	Violent, then abrupt decrease	Pressure nearly stationary for 15–20 minutes after the plunge.	Measured change
6:10–6:30 a.m.	Near minimum	Falls to 10 mph downtown at 6:30	Eye lull begins downtown; Allison Hospital still reads 80 mph.	Two stations
6:45–6:47 a.m.	27.61 in. sea-level mercurial minimum; 27.54 in. barograph	Shifts southeast and immediately reaches gale force	Center passes; lull ends.	Measured minimum
7:30–8:12 a.m.	Rising rapidly	Allison Hospital 128 mph at 7:30; instrument lost at 8:12 while recording 120 mph	Gray estimated an extreme of 140–150 mph at Miami Beach.	Separate station
7:55–8:55 a.m.	Rising rapidly	50 then 60 mph recorded downtown	Gray said sheltered readings were nearly 50% below actual velocity.	Measured, sheltered
9:00 a.m.–6:00 p.m.	29.30 in. by noon	Shifts southwest at 9 a.m.; steadily diminishes	Second phase recedes through afternoon.	Measured + narrative

Rainfall limit: Gray described heavy, wind-driven rain after midnight, but the downtown gauge failed at 3:42 a.m. and was then lost. The surviving narrative therefore cannot support a complete storm-total rainfall value for this office. Any later daily total must be checked against the original climatological form and flagged for gauge exposure or missing accumulation.

Read the record

The animation remains tied to the original pages.

First page of Richard Gray's September 1926 Miami meteorological notes — Gray’s first page records the pressure fall, minimum and the beginning of the eye lull.

Second page of Richard Gray's September 1926 Miami meteorological notes — The second page documents the sheltered anemometer, instrument failures, eye passage and returning wind.

Read the complete local Weather Bureau report PDF NWS Miami memorial record ↗Return to the Weather Bureau source room