Hurricane History of Brevard County

Brevard’s worst hurricanes mostly didn’t make landfall in Brevard. They came ashore on the Treasure Coast to the south, at Vero Beach, Hutchinson Island or Jupiter, and Brevard took the north side of the storm. The exceptions are the hurricane of July 1926, whose center ran up the coast past Cape Canaveral, and David in 1979, whose eye crossed the county’s coastal strip. The rest of this page goes storm by storm, using NOAA’s best-track data for the early years and the National Hurricane Center’s own reports from 1995 on.

Two storms often credited to Brevard belong elsewhere. The Great Miami Hurricane of September 1926 came ashore at Miami and crossed to the Gulf of Mexico around latitude 26 north, and the Fort Lauderdale Hurricane of September 1947 did the same around 26.1 north. On the best track, neither center came within about 150 miles of Cocoa Beach.

The storms, by closest approach

Positions below are from HURDAT2, the hurricane center’s best-track file. Wind speeds are the storm’s maximum sustained winds at that point, not what Brevard felt.

Storm	Date	Where the center went	Strength nearest Brevard
Unnamed	July 28, 1926	Just off Cape Canaveral, then ashore on the Volusia coast	90 knots (Category 2)
Unnamed	August 8, 1928	Ashore south of Fort Pierce, then northwest, passing about 20 miles southwest of Melbourne	85 knots at landfall, 50 knots by then
Okeechobee	September 1928	Ashore at Palm Beach, about 80 miles west of the Brevard coast at closest	100 knots
Unnamed	September 4, 1933	Ashore near Jupiter as a Category 3, then west-northwest	65 knots, about 75 miles west
Unnamed	August 1949	Ashore near Palm Beach as a Category 4, then north-northwest	85 knots, about 80 miles west
King	October 18, 1950	Ashore at Miami, then north up the middle of the peninsula	70 knots, about 55 miles west
Donna	September 11, 1960	Up from southwest Florida, about 65 miles west	65 knots
Cleo	August 28, 1964	Up the coast from Miami, just west of Melbourne and Cocoa	45 knots (tropical storm)
David	September 3 to 4, 1979	Eye over the coastal strip, over Cape Canaveral around midnight	85 knots (Category 2)
Erin	August 2, 1995	Ashore near Vero Beach	75 knots (Category 1)
Frances	September 5, 2004	Ashore on Hutchinson Island	90 knots at landfall (Category 2)
Jeanne	September 26, 2004	Ashore at the same spot	105 knots at landfall (Category 3)
Fay	August 20 to 21, 2008	Stalled along the coast near Cape Canaveral	45 to 50 knots (tropical storm)
Matthew	October 7, 2016	About 30 nautical miles offshore	Category 3
Irma	September 11, 2017	Up the middle of the peninsula, about 100 miles west	65 knots
Ian	September 29, 2022	Out into the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral	60 knots (tropical storm)
Nicole	November 10, 2022	Ashore at Vero Beach	65 knots (Category 1)
Milton	October 10, 2024	Out into the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral	70 knots (Category 1)

July 1926

This is the early storm that actually belongs to Brevard. The best track has its center at 28.5 north, 80.5 west at 0600 UTC on July 28, 1926, within a few miles of the point of Cape Canaveral, with 90-knot winds and a pressure of 967 millibars. It came ashore about four hours later on the Volusia County coast, north of the Brevard line, still at 90 knots, and weakened over north Florida that afternoon.

The storm approached from the southeast, over the Atlantic, and passed just east of the cape heading north-northwest. It struck seven weeks before the Miami hurricane that gets the attention, and on the best track it came far closer to Brevard than that storm ever did.

1928 to 1964: mostly passing to the west

The August 1928 hurricane came ashore south of Fort Pierce early on August 8 at 85 knots and turned northwest, its center passing about 20 miles southwest of Melbourne that afternoon as a tropical storm. Five weeks later the Okeechobee hurricane crossed the lake, its center about 80 miles west of the Brevard coast at closest.

From there the pattern held for decades. The 1933 hurricane hit Jupiter as a Category 3, the 1949 storm hit near Palm Beach as a Category 4, King came in at Miami in 1950 and Donna in southwest Florida in 1960, and all four tracked up the interior of the peninsula, 55 to 80 miles west of the coast, weakening as they went. Brevard was on the east side of each, well away from the center. Cleo in 1964 was the exception in track: it came up the coast from Miami and passed a few miles inland of Melbourne and Cocoa late on August 27, by then a tropical storm with 45-knot winds.

1979, Hurricane David

David reached Florida as a Category 2, coming ashore just north of Palm Beach at midday on September 3, and then ran north at 10 to 12 mph with its eye over the coast itself. Storm Data, the federal damage log, says the eye crossed the coastal strips of Martin, St. Lucie, Indian River and Brevard counties and was over the Cape Canaveral area around midnight, before moving offshore near New Smyrna Beach early on September 4. Patrick Air Force Base logged a gust of 90 mph, tides ran 3 to 5 feet above normal near the eye’s path, and three tornadoes touched down in Brevard, the worst wrecking about 50 mobile homes in Melbourne Beach and damaging a Palm Bay shopping center. State officials put Florida’s damage at $95 million, and nobody in the state died as a direct result.

The full account, with every Brevard station reading, is on Old Titusville’s Hurricane David page.

1995, Hurricane Erin

Erin came ashore near Vero Beach around 0600 UTC on August 2, 1995, as a Category 1 with 75-knot winds. The National Hurricane Center based that figure on a one-minute wind of 74.6 knots recorded by a Florida Institute of Technology anemometer at Sebastian Inlet, on Brevard’s southern edge. The Melbourne weather office estimated a 2 to 4 foot storm tide and up to about 12 inches of rain southwest through northwest of its site, and a small tornado did minor damage in Titusville.

The hurricane center’s report says thousands of homes and businesses were damaged in Brevard, more than in any other county in the region, with freshwater flooding in the Melbourne and Palm Bay areas. No one died on land in Florida. Offshore, the gambling and cruise ship Club Royale sank about 90 miles east of Cape Canaveral, and three of its crew were presumed dead.

2004, Frances and Jeanne

Frances came ashore on the southern end of Hutchinson Island at about 12:30 a.m. EDT on September 5 as a Category 2 and crawled across the state. Jeanne hit the same spot around midnight on September 25 to 26 as a Category 3. Jeanne’s eyewall rain fell on Brevard, the National Weather Service office in Melbourne measured the storm’s strongest sustained wind anywhere, 79 knots, and one Brevard man drowned when floodwater carried his truck into a canal. The landfall details and Brevard readings for both storms, from the hurricane center’s reports, are on Old Palm Bay’s 2004 hurricanes page.

2008, Tropical Storm Fay

Fay never became a hurricane, and it flooded Brevard anyway. After crossing the state from the southwest it reached the coast near Cape Canaveral, slowed to 3 or 4 knots, and drifted north along the shore on August 20 and 21. Rain bands kept training over the same ground. The hurricane center’s report records 27.65 inches about 8 nautical miles northwest of Melbourne, the highest total of the storm in the United States, and says Melbourne broke a 50-year-old record for a single rain event. Most of the worst flooding was in the rural western part of the county.

2016, Hurricane Matthew

Matthew never made landfall in Florida. It weakened to a Category 3 about 35 nautical miles east of Vero Beach early on October 7 and stayed about 30 nautical miles offshore as it went north. That was close enough for the western edge of the eyewall to clip the Kennedy Space Center, where instruments recorded sustained winds of 64 to 74 knots and gusts of 91 to 93 knots, the highest the hurricane center’s report lists anywhere on the U.S. Southeast coast. A National Weather Service survey found Category 2 winds likely occurred over the empty marshland from the north end of KSC to the Volusia County line.

The hurricane center’s report calls Brevard the part of Florida closest to Matthew’s center. In the county 11 homes were destroyed, 140 had major damage and 549 minor damage. Beach damage came to about $25 million, and dune foundations under beachfront buildings between Satellite Beach and Melbourne Beach were undermined. At KSC a roof failed on the Operations Support Building II and Launch Complex 39 lost its air conditioning. Florida’s two direct deaths from Matthew were in Putnam and Volusia counties.

2017, Hurricane Irma

Irma hit the Keys as a Category 4 and came up through the middle of the state, with its center about 100 miles west of the Brevard coast at closest approach. Its wind field was big enough that the hurricane center counted more than 7,000 damaged homes in Brevard, 450 of them destroyed or with major damage. Storm surge reached 3 to 5 feet above ground from Cape Canaveral north, and the Trident Pier gauge at Port Canaveral peaked at 4.2 feet above the normal high-tide line.

2022, Ian and Nicole

Ian, the Category 4 that devastated southwest Florida, crossed the peninsula and came out over the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral at 1200 UTC on September 29 as a tropical storm with 60-knot winds. Water along the Brevard coast reached 2 to 4 feet above ground level.

Six weeks later Nicole came ashore at Vero Beach at 0745 UTC on November 10 as a minimal Category 1. The hurricane center found its hurricane-force winds stayed over the water, but the surge was the real damage: the Trident Pier gauge measured 5.83 feet above normal tide, on beaches Ian had already eroded. No deaths were directly attributed to Nicole.

2024, Hurricane Milton

Milton made landfall on Siesta Key on the Gulf coast as a Category 3 on the evening of October 9, crossed the state, and came out into the Atlantic near Cape Canaveral by 0800 UTC on October 10. Its surge on the Atlantic side ran 1 to 3 feet above ground from Port Canaveral north.

What the record shows

Put the tracks side by side and the pattern is plain. Brevard’s direct hits come from storms moving north along the coast, July 1926 and David in 1979, and its damage comes just as often from storms that landed 20 to 60 miles south, at Fort Pierce, Hutchinson Island or Vero Beach, with Brevard on the wet and windy north side. And a tropical storm that stalled off the cape, Fay, dropped 27.65 inches of rain near Melbourne. Matthew showed what a major hurricane 30 miles offshore can do without ever coming ashore.

Further Reading

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