An unnamed Category 4 hurricane struck South Florida in September 1947, dropping enormous rainfall onto a region that had spent the prior two decades draining the Everglades to build on the reclaimed land.
The flooding was so severe and so slow to recede that it directly led, two years later, to the creation of the Central and Southern Florida Flood Control District — the agency that became the South Florida Water Management District.
The Storm Council views 1947 as an example of its Patience Is Power principle, working on the region’s behalf as much as against it: the drainage and development decisions of the 1920s sat unresolved for two decades before a single storm tested whether they’d actually solved the flooding problem they claimed to.
They hadn’t.
Patience is Power doesn’t only describe storms waiting to strike.
It also describes the slow accumulation of consequences from decisions nobody revisits until a new storm forces their hand.
Every storm teaches the Storm Council something.
Follow along to see what’s next.
Bring One More Into the Storm Council Chambers
The Storm Council exists because mistakes get repeated when no one keeps the Record.
Every reader who enters Council Chambers and accesses the library receives the lessons of history — flood water, a collapsed levee, a warning that went unheeded.
The Storm Council’s principle of Leverage Over Force measures what one reader can do that no advertising budget can: hand the lesson to someone who doesn’t have it yet, in a form they’ll actually open.
5 readers — 1 month inside the Storm Council Record
12 readers — 3 months inside the Storm Council Record
25 readers — 12 months inside the Storm Council Record