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Pioneer Records Early Storm Memories
With our high-tech arsenal of weather forecasting tools, it’s incredible to imagine what it must have been like here when hurricanes made their own introductions.
Belle Enos, who came to these shores in 1876 as an infant with her pioneer parents, E.N. and Ella Dimick, remembered such a time during a 1962 interview for an Historical Society of Palm Beach County oral history:
“We hadn’t been here but two weeks. Of course, we had gone to somebody else’s house. It was pretty large because they had a big family, and there were four families of us, mind you. And so they let us come in and stay until we could get a temporary home to live in. And we hadn’t been here two weeks and we had an awful hurricane. And a lot of our furniture and things were stored on the front porch. So when it was over they were out in the front yard,” she recalled, laughing. “That was our initiation.”
Storm records show that could have been one of two Category 3 hurricanes that blackened these skies in 1876 — the first, No. 2, arriving between Sept. 12-19, and the second, No. 5, between Oct. 12-23.
After that, Belle said her father looked to the sky for weather clues.
“My father could tell when there was a hurricane coming by the clouds. But this one came unexpectedly, before he learned about the clouds. We’d only been here two weeks, and it scared my mother and my aunts and different ones to death.”
She added: “Hurricanes didn’t mean anything to us after we went through that one. That was a terrific one.”
Palm Beach police chief and history buff Mike Reiter loaned me a CD containing Mrs. Enos’ interview, and I’ve been savoring it for several days now, re-cuing her vivid memories for my children to hear.
The chief, as some of you may know, personally transferred the oral histories from reel-to-reel tapes to CDs for the historical society. I for one am mighty glad he did.
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