Latest Hurricane News

Why Hurricane Season Is So Active This November

At a Glance

November is the last month of the Atlantic hurricane season.
Usually, a November storm forms every one to two years.
This November, we've had a hurricane landfall and another hurricane in the North Atlantic.
It's a contrast to August, which failed to produce a single named storm.

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

The Atlantic hurricane season isn't typically very active in November, but the 2022 season has thrown us yet another curveball just in the first few days of the month.

It started on Halloween, when Tropical Storm Lisa was born in the Caribbean Sea. Lisa became a hurricane on Wednesday, then made landfall late that afternoon.

While it was one of the few hurricanes to landfall in Belize in modern times, Lisa wasn't the only part of the story.

While Lisa was strengthening in the Caribbean Sea Tuesday, Tropical Storm Martin formed far east-northeast of Bermuda. The following day, Martin became a hurricane just three hours after Lisa.

It was only the third time in recorded history that two Atlantic Basin hurricanes were active at the same time in November, according to Colorado State University tropical scientist Phil Klotzbach.

But that wasn’t all. On Tuesday, the National Hurricane Center also circled an area for possible subtropical or tropical development in the eastern Caribbean Sea into the Bermuda Triangle.

And Thursday morning, the NHC added another area of possible development east of Bermuda.

It left some meteorologists wondering if it was November or, say, July or August. Then again, this past August failed to produce a single storm for the first time in 25 years.

This map showed the two areas the NHC was monitoring for possible development (in yellow), and the tracks histories of both Lisa and Martin as of Nov. 3, 2022.
(Outlook, Track Data: NOAA/NHC)

A More Typical November

Usually, activity drops off considerably by November, as the graph from the National Hurricane Center shows below.

Atlantic hurricanes (red) and tropical storms (yellow) from 1944 through 2020 show a pronounced peak in September, but much reduced activity in November and later, as highlighted in the graph above.
(NOAA/NHC)

That's due to a number of factors, including increasing wind shear, cooling water, and fewer disturbances that often serve as seeds of storms known as tropical waves coming off Africa in November, compared to the peak months of hurricane season.

This essentially shrinks the area where tropical storms and hurricanes can form in November.

Since satellites first began regular coverage of the Atlantic Basin in the mid-1960s, an average of one storm has developed in November every one to two years.

In 28 of those Novembers from 1966 through 2021, not one system became a storm. However, eight of those Novembers had multiple storms form, led by three storms each in 2005 and 1966. Novembers with multiple storms, while infrequent, certainly aren't unprecedented.

Last year, Wanda first became a tropical storm on Oct. 30, but its wandering path in the central Atlantic lasted into the first week of November, after which no further storms formed.

(MORE: When The Last Storm Of Hurricane Season Typically Forms)

Of the 38 tropical systems that first became storms in November from 1966 through 2021, 22 eventually became hurricanes.

In the hyperactive 2020 season, Eta first became a tropical storm on Halloween night, then slammed into Nicaragua at Category 4 strength on Nov. 3. Iota followed 13 days later as the second Category 4 hurricane to strike Nicaragua. And Theta was a tropical storm in the central Atlantic while Iota was still getting its act together.

What's Different This November

Hurricane Lisa found a cocoon of low wind shear over plentiful deep, warm water in the Caribbean Sea to develop, a common scenario late in the hurricane season.

Martin eventually sprouted enough thunderstorms near its center to transform from what had been a low-pressure system with fronts attached to a full-blown tropical storm, then hurricane, before a cold front caught it in the North Atlantic Ocean.

Ocean water much warmer than usual for early November also likely played a role in the metamorphosis of Martin.

This map of sea-surface temperatures from Nov. 3, 2022, also has the path histories of both Hurricanes Lisa and Martin. Martin developed over water that was warmer than average for the time of year.

An unusually strong blocked weather pattern in the western Atlantic Ocean left open the door that a broad area of low pressure could become a subtropical or tropical depression or storm in the Bermuda Triangle.

This was all happening as the large-scale atmosphere over the tropical Atlantic Basin favored rising motion, supportive of the thunderstorm building blocks needed for tropical development, rather than suppressing them.

It's another reminder that while we're long past the peak of hurricane season, it's not over yet.

The Weather Company’s primary journalistic mission is to report on breaking weather news, the environment and the importance of science to our lives. This story does not necessarily represent the position of our parent company, IBM.