Hurricane Michael: The Day the Panhandle Broke

On the tenth of October, twenty eighteen, the Florida Panhandle was struck by the most powerful hurricane ever recorded to make landfall here. Hurricane Michael came ashore near Mexico Beach and Tyndall Air Force Base, just east of Panama City Beach, at around half past twelve in the afternoon. It was a Category Five storm, with maximum sustained winds estimated near one hundred and sixty miles per hour, and it gave the region almost no time to strengthen its defenses.

In the small town of Mexico Beach, out of roughly one thousand six hundred and ninety buildings, more than one thousand five hundred were damaged and over eight hundred were destroyed outright. Storm surge and tide pushed water nine to fourteen feet deep across low ground between Tyndall and Port Saint Joe. At least seventy four deaths were attributed to the storm across the United States and Central America, and it caused an estimated twenty five billion dollars in damage.

Panama City Beach itself, sheltered slightly to the west, fared better than the communities just inland and east, but the wider region was shattered. Years later, some low income and Black neighborhoods in the area were still struggling to fully recover. Michael reshaped how this coast thinks about building, and about survival.