"On September 12, 1928 a major Cape Verde hurricane struck the Leeward Islands.  The amount of warning time varied by island, but Guadeloupe apparently received no advanced warning and the unprepared island suffered 1200 deaths.  The total for other nearby islands was less than fifty.

The hurricane's rampage was far from over, it struck Puerto Rico a little over a day later at what today would be Category Five status, and killed an additional 312 people.  It became known on the island as the San Felipe Segundo hurricane since it was the second memorable hurricane to hit Puerto Rico on San Felipe's feast day (the first was in 1876.)

The storm moved northwestward and in three days it struck an ill-prepared Palm Beach, FL.  The hurricane moved over Lake Okeechobee and caused the earthen dykes around the Lake to fail.  The resulting flood caused over 1800 deaths.  The actual figure will never be known as many were undocumented agricultural workers and the bodies were disposed of either in mass graves or massive funeral pyres."

"The Okeechobee hurricane, or San Felipe Segundo hurricane, was a deadly hurricane that struck the Leeward Islands, Puerto Rico, the Bahamas, and Florida in September of the 1928 Atlantic hurricane season. As of 2010, it is the only recorded hurricane to strike Puerto Rico at Category 5 strength on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Scale, and one of the ten most intense ever recorded to make landfall in the United States.

The hurricane caused devastation throughout its path. As many as 1,200 people were killed in Guadeloupe. The storm directly struck Puerto Rico at peak strength, killing at least 300 and leaving hundreds of thousands homeless. In South Florida at least 2,500 were killed when a storm surge from Lake Okeechobee breached the dike surrounding the lake, flooding an area covering hundreds of square miles.[1] In total, the hurricane killed at least 4,078 people and caused around US$100 million ($1.34 billion 2013 USD) in damages over the course of its path."