Old Cocoa
Weather and disasters

Hurricane David in Cocoa, September 3, 1979

Hurricane David's eye ran up the Brevard coast on the night of September 3, 1979. In Cocoa that meant a tornado over town in the afternoon, hurricane-force gusts and heavy rain after dark, and no deaths.

By The Old Cocoa History Team Updated October 15, 2026
Satellite image of Hurricane David over the Caribbean, a tight eye at the center of a white spiral of cloud.
Hurricane David on August 31, 1979, the day it struck the Dominican Republic near peak strength. Three days later it reached Florida as a much weaker Category 2. NOAA / National Hurricane Center via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

Cocoa’s part of Hurricane David started before the hurricane got there. At 3:25 p.m. on Monday, September 3, 1979, Labor Day, a tornado dropped out of David’s clouds over Cocoa and tore roofs off buildings in a small area. That’s the whole entry in the federal Storm Data log, and it is the only tornado the log places in the city. The hurricane itself was still well to the south, having come ashore just north of Palm Beach at about noon as a Category 2.

It came up the coast at 10 to 12 mph, its eye over the barrier islands rather than out at sea. Storm Data 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, which put the center a few miles east of Cocoa, across the Indian River and Merritt Island, late that night. The full county-wide story, with every Brevard station reading, is on our sister site’s Hurricane David page at Old Titusville.

Colorized infrared satellite image of Hurricane David over the Florida peninsula, the densest cloud in red and orange around the center on the east coast.
David at 23:30 UTC on September 3, 1979, which was 7:30 that evening in Cocoa. The National Hurricane Center's best track puts the center on the Brevard coast near Melbourne at about this time, some 25 miles south of Cocoa. NOAA via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

What the night brought

The weather offices closest to Cocoa recorded what the storm felt like on this stretch of coast. The Coast Guard station at Port Canaveral, a few miles east, logged sustained winds of 60 mph and a gust of 80. Patrick Air Force Base, south of Cocoa Beach, logged a gust of 90 mph. Storm Data’s summary for the whole eye track was sustained winds of 55 to 65 mph with gusts of 75 to 85. Cocoa, a few miles west of the track, had no instrument of its own.

Rain near the track ran mostly 6 to 9 inches, with a few reports up to 11. Tides ran 3 to 5 feet above normal near the eye’s path, and Storm Data singles out Brevard and southern Volusia for severe beach erosion. Near the eye, the damage list was roofs, signs, mobile homes, screened enclosures, marinas, boats, docks, trees and power lines: widespread, the log says, but mostly minor.

The groves

For a town built on oranges, the line in Storm Data that mattered was the one about citrus. The worst citrus damage in the state was along the coast from Jupiter to Oak Hill, which takes in the whole Indian River district, Cocoa’s groves among it. Grapefruit was hit hardest, mostly by fruit blown off the trees and by wind scarring on what stayed. Statewide agricultural losses probably passed $25 million. The packing houses that once made Cocoa a citrus town are on our packing-house page.

Hand-drawn NHC track chart of Hurricane David, August 24 to September 7, 1979, running from the Caribbean up the Florida coast to Georgia.
The National Hurricane Center's track chart. David runs north up the Florida coast, then just offshore, before its last landfall in Georgia. NOAA / National Hurricane Center via Wikimedia Commons. Public domain.

The worst of it was down the county

Brevard’s worst single blow came from a different tornado, at 1:30 that afternoon. It struck the Ocean Holiday Travel Resort in Melbourne Beach, destroying or badly damaging about 50 mobile homes and the nearby Opus 21 condominiums, then skipped across the Indian River and did about $1.5 million in damage at the Port Malabar Shopping Center in Palm Bay. A third Brevard tornado, a small one, touched down near Mims at 7 p.m.

Nobody in Florida died as a direct result of David. State officials put the damage at $95 million, most of it in the middle east-coast counties, Brevard among them. David made its last landfall just south of Savannah Beach, Georgia, the next afternoon.

Further Reading

Sources

  1. NOAA, Storm Data and Unusual Weather Phenomena, September 1979 (vol. 21, no. 9), page 3 (archived copy)
  2. National Hurricane Center, Preliminary Report: Hurricane David (Miles Lawrence, October 17, 1979), page 4
  3. National Hurricane Center, Preliminary Report: Hurricane David, meteorological data table (U.S.), page 8
  4. National Hurricane Center, HURDAT2 Atlantic best track, storm AL091979 (David)

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Hurricane David 1979 hurricanes weather September 3