High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! Hurricane Florence was a minimal Atlantic hurricane that struck the Florida Panhandle in September of the 1953 season. The eighth storm and fifth hurricane of the season, Florence developed in the western Caribbean from a tropical wave near Jamaica on September 23. It produced heavy rainfall on the nearby island, and later caused damage in western Cuba. The storm quickly intensified into a hurricane over the Yucatan Channel, and as it moved north through the Gulf of Mexico, Florence`s maximum sustained winds reached 125 mph (205 km/h). On September 26, the hurricane hit in a sparsely-populated region of western Florida, and shortly after landfall became an extratropical cyclone.