Hurricane Safety and Preparedness

Things To Expect From Hurricane Season In July

At a Glance

July typically continues hurricane season's slow uptick in activity early in the season.
The area where tropical development occurs expands eastward.
A recent July had a record number of named storms and there was once a Category 5 in the month.

Sign up for the Morning Brief email newsletter to get weekday updates from The Weather Channel and our meteorologists.

Hurricane season typically begins a slow climb in activity in July, but that doesn't mean that all Julys are quiet.

July has accounted for 7% of the Atlantic's tropical storms since 1851. That pales in comparison to the percentage of named storms that have formed in the busiest months of hurricane season: August (22%), September (35%) and October (21%), according to data from NOAA's Hurricane Research Division. Put another way, about one named storm has formed in July each year, on average.

One July hurricane is typical roughly every three years. Sixty-four of the 146 storms that have formed in July since 1851 intensified into hurricanes. Category 3 or stronger hurricanes in July are even more rare, with just nine of those in the historical record.

A subtle shift east in typical formation areas occurs in July. Formation areas spread eastward to include more of the Atlantic Ocean to the east of the Lesser Antilles and the eastern Caribbean.

Tropical waves, one of the seeds for tropical storm development, become a bit better defined in July. That's one reason we begin to look farther east in the second month of hurricane season.

We've already had several tropical waves move across the Caribbean and Central America this season.

The Gulf of Mexico and the waters of the western Atlantic off the East Coast are also spots we watch for development in July.

A hurricane formed last July. Hurricane Don meandered around the north Atlantic for around 10 days last year, including a large clockwise loop well away from land.

July's record for named storms was recently tied. The hyperactive 2020 hurricane season had five storms form in July: Edouard, Fay, Gonzalo, Hanna and Isaias. That tied 2005 for the most storms in the month since 1950.

On the opposite side of the spectrum, no named storms roamed the Atlantic waters at any point in July as recently as 2016.

A Category 5 hurricane formed in July nearly 20 years ago. Emily in 2005 is the only July hurricane to reach the highest rating of Category 5 on the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale.

Emily's stint as a Category 5 was a brief one, lasting only about six hours when it was centered just southwest of Jamaica late July 16 into early July 17, 2005. The hurricane eventually made landfall in Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula as a Category 4.