Is America's Hurricane Threat Over For The Season?

This Atlantic hurricane season has been deadly and destructive, and while the mainland's risk typically plummets beginning in late October, recent years have generated impactful late-season U.S. storms.

A​fter a siege of five U.S. hurricanes, from Beryl through Milton, many are wondering if we've finally turned a corner and can begin putting this awful season away.

​Is the mainland U.S. hurricane threat over? As most of you know, the Atlantic hurricane season stretches from June through November and encompasses virtually all hurricanes in the basin.

B​ut that doesn't mean the U.S. hurricane threat is equal throughout that six-month period.

O​f 287 hurricanes logged by NOAA's Hurricane Research Division that made a mainland U.S. landfall from 1851 through 2023, only 15 of those did so after Oct. 19. That's only 5 percent of all U.S. landfalling hurricanes.

B​y contrast, 63 percent of all U.S. hurricane landfalls happened in either August or September.

S​o the late-season U.S. hurricane threat is much lower, but it's not zero.

(Further beef up your forecast with our detailed, hour-by-hour breakdown for the next 8 days – only available on our Premium Pro experience.)

If it happens, it's probably Florida. As the chart above on the right alludes to, when a late-season hurricane does landfall in the mainland, it almost always does so in Florida.

E​leven of those 15 post-Oct. 19 hurricanes made landfall in the Sunshine State. And as the track map below shows, that's particularly the case for central and south Florida.

One common late-season scenario is for storms to form in the far western Caribbean Sea, then get whipped quickly northeast into the Florida Peninsula, which sticks out like a catcher's mitt.

T​he three hurricanes which landfell in the Carolinas all did so in the 19th century - 1861, 1878 and 1899.

Texas comes about as close as we can to sounding an "all clear" this late in the season, as the map shows no hurricane tracks over the Lone Star state in more than 170 years of records.

There have been recent examples. Three of these late-season U.S. hurricanes have happened this century, including as recently as two years ago:

• N​icole along Florida's Atlantic coast in early Nov. 2022
• Zeta in Louisiana and the Southeast in late Oct. 2020
• W​ilma in South Florida in late Oct. 2005

A​merica's record-latest mainland hurricane landfall was Cat. 2 Hurricane Kate on Nov. 21, 1985, at Mexico Beach in the Florida Panhandle. That was just one week before Thanksgiving.

W​hen does the season's last storm typically happen? One last thing we examined was the date at which the last storm of the season forms.

Since the satellite era - from 1966 through 2023 - November was the month that most often had the last storm. That makes sense given the definition of hurricane season.

H​owever, notice the spread in the graph below. Just over a third of modern-era hurricane seasons stopped generating storms after October.

A​ select few of them were so hostile to development that the season effectively ended in September. A similar number of them dragged on into December, usually spawning mid-Atlantic or Caribbean-only storms.

A​ccording to the National Hurricane Center, an average season generates 2 more storms and 1 additional hurricane from late October until the season's end.

It's too soon to let your guard down. Make sure your hurricane plan is still ready to go.

M​ORE ON WEATHER.COM

-The US Hurricanes Many Have Forgotten

-​Cat 1 Hurricanes Are Dangerous, Too

-​Why The Planet Needs Hurricanes

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on X (formerly Twitter), Threads, Facebook and Bluesky.