Oscar's Tiny Size Was A Hurricane Rarity

If you blinked over the weekend, you may have missed Oscar. The storm rapidly intensified into a hurricane on Saturday and made two landfalls on Sunday (one in the Bahamas and then in Cuba).

Oscar was not only the smallest hurricane of the season, but the smallest hurricane since at least the mid-1960s, according to meteorologist and hurricane expert, Michael Lowry. In less than two months the season went from experiencing Hurricane Helene, which was one of the largest hurricanes to strike the U.S. coast, to one of the smallest hurricanes we have seen in quite some time.

I​f you consider tropical storm force winds (which includes many more storms), Oscar was in the top 10 smallest for the last 20 years. There have only been six other storms from 2004 to 2023 that have been Oscar's size or smaller and none smaller than Oscar since Isaac in 2018, according to Phil Klotzbach, meteorologist at Colorado State University.

Tropical Storm force winds from Hurricane Oscar only extended about 40 miles from the center on average. When Oscar formed, hurricane force winds only extended 5 miles from the center, then grew to about 10 miles before landfall. In comparison, Hurricane Helene’s tropical storm force winds stretched at times nearly 350 miles from the center. A wild contrast that can have a huge impact at landfall.

Smaller storms will have a smaller path of damage than a larger storm. That’s because the hurricane and tropical storm force winds don’t extend as far out in a smaller storm.

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Small Storms Are Harder To Forecast

Smaller storms can rapidly strengthen or weaken with small changes in their environment because they contain less mass (air, water vapor, clouds) to spin up or slow down, this makes them tricky to forecast.

Wind shear and dry air: Two of the biggest factors that can trigger weakening, or even the dissipation of a small tropical storm or hurricane, are wind shear and dry air.

Wind shear is a change in wind speed and/or direction with height that can rip apart a tropical storm or hurricane.

Dry, sinking air disrupts tropical storms by suppressing thunderstorms and strengthening downdrafts of storms that are able to form. That prevents thunderstorms from persisting long enough near a surface low-pressure center in order to keep the storm healthy.

“For example, if you have a small hurricane and slam it with a ton of wind shear, it is likely to degrade much quicker than a larger storm,” said Klotzbach. “Alternatively, if you put a large storm in favorable environmental conditions, it is likely to intensify at a slower rate than a small storm.”

Land interaction is another trap that smaller storms must avoid to survive: Tall mountains or rough terrain in general are capable of quickly shredding a small circulation.

While large and more intense hurricanes are not immune to the obstacles mentioned above, they are better suited to fend them off.

Sometimes, larger hurricanes will battle one or more of those hostile factors for a period of time and eventually reorganize. Other times, they can fall apart, just like their smaller counterparts.