Around 7 p.m. on Tuesday, two twisters spawned by Ian's outer bands tore through Broward County in parts of Pembroke Pines and Cooper City, uprooting trees and flipping airplanes at North Perry Airport.
"Tornadoes in the outer band of a hurricane that is in another part of the state are one of the hardest weather scenarios to cover. They happen so quickly and move so fast that they are often gone before anybody can get the message. Luckily they are not usually terribly strong, but can obviously do damage," meteorologist Bryan Norcross of Fox Weather tells New Times.
While Miamians might think twisters are reserved for Tornado Alley and dusty Midwest farms reminiscent of The Wizard of Oz, South Florida has seen its share of vortexes.
Among the most memorable was the Great Miami Tornado, which formed seemingly out of the blue in the City of Miami neighborhood of Shenandoah on the afternoon of May 12, 1997.
The tornado swept through parts of East Little Havana and downtown Miami, tearing the roof off an apartment building before heading into Biscayne Bay near the Venetian Causeway. Though the twister was an F1 tornado with relatively low strength on the Fujita scale, it's remembered for its direct path through densely populated communities and the ominous image it stamped on the city skyline. Once it reached the water, the tornado disappeared as quickly as it came.
"It was one of these amazing things because it came out of left field. It just appeared and then it was gone," historian Paul George of HistoryMiami tells New Times.
George, who was working in an office in downtown Miami at the time, says he didn't even get to see the tornado itself, and heading home to Shenandoah without knowing what happened was an eerie schlep through damaged streets.
"Some traffic lights were swinging from their wires, so when you reached an intersection you had to crawl forward. When I got home, our kids' plastic playhouse was thrown over the fence into the alley," George says. "It's largely forgotten today, but it was amazing."
Florida ranked 11th in the nation among U.S. states for frequency of tornadoes in a National Weather Service ten-year analysis ending in 2014. (Texas had the most, followed by Dorothy's home state, Kansas.)
Historical hot spots for Florida tornado activity center around Palm Beach and Broward counties and the Tampa Bay area. Extremely strong tornadoes of the sort seen in the Midwest are infrequent in Florida, and the state averaged about two tornado-related deaths per year from 1984 to 2014.
The deadliest tornado outbreak on record in Florida took place in February 1998 around Kissimmee. At least a dozen tornadoes were reported, and the death toll reached 42 by the time the catastrophe was through.
In South Florida, there have been several notable tornadoes over the past century. And New Times' list of the twisters shows that, while we might not be in Kansas anymore, we're still pretty prone to tornadoes.
1925
On April 5, 1925, a tornado tore through parts of Miami-Dade County east of Hialeah. Though the true wind speed of the tornado was not recorded, photos of the damage indicate that it was possibly an F3 twister, which entails winds between 158 and 206 mph. The tornado killed five people and destroyed parts of the now-defunct White Belt Dairy near modern-day Brownsville.1959
A weather researcher at the University of Miami (UM) wrote an eye-witness account of a June 17, 1959, tornado that thrashed Coconut Grove, which he observed from the Merrick Building of UM's Coral Gables campus. Witnesses say it was spawned by a thunderstorm with "extreme" electrical activity and lightning. The tornado caused about $1.5 million in property damage at the time.1964
Hurricane Isbell marched laterally across the Florida peninsula on October 14, 1964, spawning an outbreak of tornadoes of varying strength around South Florida including one in Coral Gables.1965
A year after Hurricane Isbell, a spate of four tornadoes broke out in South Florida on February 23, 1965. The strongest twister, an F3 on the Fujita scale, hit Fort Lauderdale and Oakland Park, injuring six people.
Damage at the end of Front Street in the Florida Keys from a tornado produced by Hurricane Agnes on June 18, 1972.
Photo from the Ida Woodward Barron Collection.
1972
The first hurricane of the 1972 season, Hurricane Agnes, hit Florida on June 18 and sent F2 and F3 tornadoes across Monroe and Hendry counties. A witness in Big Coppitt Key said one twister tore the roof off her van and launched a woman into a nearby tree. The hurricane was one of the most destructive on record in the U.S. at the time and was linked to the death of 128 people.1980
A tornado ripped through Fort Lauderdale, Pompano Beach, and Oakland Park in March 1980. The disaster blasted apartments, schools, and homes, and killed one woman who was blown off her sixth-floor balcony.1983
Broward experienced another tornado outbreak on March 17, 1983. Several small tornadoes spun through Pompano Beach, at one point lifting a school bus full of students off the ground near Lighthouse Point.1997
The Great Miami Tornado appeared in the Miami neighborhood of Shenandoah and sped through downtown Miami in just about 15 minutes, causing 12 injuries and about $525,000 in property damage.
In March 2003, a powerful tornado caused extensive damage in Brownsville and Liberty City.
Photo from National Weather Service archives
