Hurricane David, 1979: When It Hit Florida, Its Category, and Brevard's Damage

Hurricane David reached Florida at midday on Labor Day, September 3, 1979, coming ashore just north of Palm Beach as a Category 2 hurricane. It then ran almost due north at 10 to 12 mph, hugging the shoreline. Its eye crossed the coastal strips of Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River and Brevard counties, sat over the Cape Canaveral area around midnight, and went back out to sea near New Smyrna Beach early on September 4. The National Hurricane Center’s best track holds it at 85 knots, about 100 mph, the whole way up the coast.

That track put Brevard close to the worst of it. The federal Storm Data record for September 1979 says property damage was generally light south of Palm Beach County and north of Brevard. In between, near the eye, it hit roofs, mobile homes, screened enclosures, docks, trees and utility lines. No deaths in Florida were directly attributed to David.

The track and intensity

David was at its worst a week before Florida. It wrecked Dominica, then peaked south of Puerto Rico at 150 knots (about 175 mph) with a central pressure of 924 millibars on August 30. It struck the Dominican Republic just west of Santo Domingo on the afternoon of August 31, still near 150 knots. The National Hurricane Center’s preliminary report, written six weeks later, counted more than 1,000 deaths there, most of them from floods.

The mountains of Hispaniola broke it. David came out over the Windward Passage on September 1 with its winds cut to about 60 knots, crossed the eastern tip of Cuba, and began to strengthen again over the warm water of the Bahamas without getting back anywhere near its peak. It crossed Andros Island on September 2.

The NHC report puts the Florida landfall at about 1600 GMT on September 3, which is noon Eastern Daylight Time. The eye was 20 to 30 nautical miles across, and because the storm moved so slowly, some coastal towns sat inside it for about two hours. Minimum pressure at landfall was 973 millibars (28.73 inches). David made its last landfall just south of Savannah Beach, Georgia, on the afternoon of September 4.

What Brevard County experienced

Storm Data puts typical conditions along the eye track at sustained winds of 55 to 65 mph with gusts of 75 to 85 mph. The Brevard instruments that reported fit that picture:

Station	Reading	Source
Patrick Air Force Base	Gust of 90 mph	Storm Data
South Melbourne Beach	Sustained 61 mph, gust of 86 mph	NHC preliminary report
Port Canaveral Coast Guard station	Sustained 60 mph, gust of 80 mph	NHC preliminary report
Kennedy Space Center	Gust of 77 mph	NHC preliminary report
Melbourne	Gust of 70 mph; lowest pressure 28.68 inches	NHC preliminary report

The highest gust anywhere in Florida was 95 mph at the Fort Pierce Coast Guard station.

Water did as much as wind. Tides ran 3 to 5 feet above normal near the eye track, and Storm Data singles out Brevard and southern Volusia for severe beach erosion. Rain near the track was mostly 6 to 9 inches, with a few reports up to 11; Vero Beach, just south of the county line, measured 8.92 inches.

Citrus took a real hit. Storm Data put Florida’s agricultural losses above $25 million, with grapefruit hurt worst by fruit knocked to the ground and scarred by wind, and the heaviest citrus damage was along the coast from Jupiter to Oak Hill in Volusia County. That stretch takes in the whole Indian River citrus district, Titusville and Mims included. State officials put total Florida damage at $95 million, most of it in the middle east-coast counties.

The Brevard tornadoes

Storm Data lists three tornadoes in Brevard on September 3, all spawned by David:

• 1:30 p.m., Melbourne Beach to Palm Bay. The worst of the three. About 50 mobile homes were destroyed or badly damaged at the Ocean Holiday Travel Resort in Melbourne Beach, and the nearby Opus 21 condominium complex was badly damaged too. The tornado then skipped across the Indian River and did an estimated $1.5 million in damage at the Port Malabar Shopping Center in Palm Bay.
• 3:25 p.m., Cocoa. A twister dropped over Cocoa and damaged roofs in a small area.
• 7:00 p.m., near Mims. A small tornado inside the hurricane’s circulation, a few miles north of Titusville.

None of the three killed or injured anyone. Statewide, David produced at least 10 tornadoes.

What it meant for Titusville

Titusville sits at the north end of the county, and David reached it last. By the time the eye was over the Cape Canaveral area around midnight, the storm had been grinding up the Brevard coast for hours. The center passed east of the city, over the Cape side of the river, rather than through it. Kennedy Space Center, across the water, logged a 77 mph gust, and by the early hours of September 4 its wind had swung around to the west-southwest as the center moved off to the north. Mims had its small tornado that evening.

The federal record shows nothing in north Brevard on the scale of the Melbourne Beach tornado, and no deaths anywhere in the state. For Titusville, David was a night of wind, rain and high water rather than a disaster.

Where the record comes from

Two documents written within weeks of the storm carry nearly everything above. The National Hurricane Center’s preliminary report, by Miles Lawrence and dated October 17, 1979, has the track, the landfall time and a station-by-station table of wind, pressure, tide and rain. The September 1979 issue of Storm Data, the federal government’s monthly damage log, has the county-by-county damage picture and every tornado with its time and place. The NHC’s HURDAT2 best track gives the six-hourly positions and the 85-knot intensity. Where those three agree, this page uses their wording; where a figure appears in only one, the table names which.

Further Reading

• Florida’s Hurricane History by Jay Barnes
• Florida: A Short History by Michael Gannon