The Florida Peninsula's Luck Since Hurricane Irma Won't Last

Florida's Peninsula has been spared a hurricane landfall for five years, despite a siege of them along the Gulf Coast, including notable strikes in the Florida Panhandle.

Since Irma tracked northward through Florida in September 2017, no hurricane has made landfall in the state's peninsula in the last five years.

Looking at the map of hurricane tracks over the past four seasons, it almost appears as if there has been a shield over the peninsula, deflecting hurricanes away.

The orange tracks in the map below show segments during which a former or future hurricane was a tropical storm at the time, including a few over the peninsula.

In 2021, Elsa briefly became a hurricane off western Florida but weakened to a tropical storm before landfall in northern Florida's Big Bend. Later, Isaias flirted with the east coast of Florida as a tropical storm, then became a hurricane again on its way to the Carolinas.

Among the record 30 storms and 14 hurricanes of the 2020 season, Sally moved across South Florida as a depression, then a tropical storm, before lumbering into Alabama and the western Florida Panhandle as a hurricane. Eta was only briefly a Gulf hurricane before cutting across northern Florida as a tropical storm.

Hurricane Dorian was a close call. After devastating the northwestern Bahamas, it stayed well off Florida's East Coast before it grazed the Carolinas in September 2019.

Why The Peninsula Luck?

Where a hurricane tracks depends on the surrounding large-scale winds steering the storm.

Recently, any hurricanes have been steered away from the peninsula, either far enough east, as was the case with Dorian, or toward the northern Gulf of Mexico.

Elsa (2021) and Eta (2020) experienced just enough wind shear or dry air to keep them from plowing into the state as hurricanes.

Florida's Panhandle hasn't been nearly so lucky.

In addition to the flooding rain and winds from Sally in 2020, the panhandle took its hardest punch from Category 5 Hurricane Michael in October 2018, one of the most intense U.S. landfalls in history.

Louisiana has taken the brunt of hurricanes recently, including Category 4 hurricanes in consecutive years – Laura in 2020 and Ida in 2021, along with 2020's Delta and Zeta.

An Even Longer Hurricane-Free Streak Recently

Following 2005's Hurricane Wilma, almost 11 years went by without a single hurricane landfall anywhere in Florida.

It was, by far, the state's longest hurricane drought, during which 68 straight hurricanes failed to come ashore in Florida. Hurricane Hermine finally snapped that streak in 2016.

If you think the first map above was amazing, the one below probably tops that. The only hurricane tracks on that map near or over Florida were of two former hurricanes, Ida in 2009 and Ernesto in 2006.

This Won't Last Much Longer

Since 1851, 40% of all U.S. hurricanes hit Florida, and 88% of all major hurricane strikes have been either in Florida or Texas, according to NOAA's Hurricane Research Division.

With these recent lucky streaks, some may have forgotten the two-year siege of 2004 and 2005.

Beginning with Charley and ending with Wilma, six hurricanes made landfall in the state, five of those in the peninsula.

A seventh hurricane, Ivan, officially made landfall in Alabama, but also inflicted heavy damage in the panhandle. And 2005's Hurricane Rita produced storm surge flooding, heavy rain and tropical-storm-force winds in the Florida Keys while passing to their south.

Since 2005, Florida added almost 4 million new residents, according to USAFacts. In 2020, Florida was the top state for Americans relocating.

That likely includes a significant number of new residents that have never experienced a hurricane before.

Despite any recent stretch of hurricane-free luck, you should prepare every hurricane season as if this will be the season one strikes.

You can find tips on how to develop your hurricane plan here.

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