Where Should I Book A Trip During Hurricane Season?

As hurricane season looms, many travelers may be wondering where it is safe to travel during the summer months. Typically, travelers may want to be wary of locations like Bermuda, the Bahamas, Puerto Rico and the U.S. Southeast and Gulf coasts during hurricane season.

However, not all Caribbean islands carry the same threat when it comes to hurricanes. Those that lie outside of the main hurricane belt are a safer bet between early June and the end of November.

A hurricane belt is a region that experiences frequent hurricanes. The main belts are in stretches of the North Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean basins. That includes the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico.

(​MORE: What This Hurricane Season Means For Your Next Vacation)

If travelers want to avoid even the vaguest threat of hurricane season’s inconveniences and risks, they might want to try the following locations:

California

A hurricane or tropical storm is exceedingly rare along the California coast. Only one recorded hurricane has made landfall in the state, and that was in 1858 in Southern California. Tropical Storm Kay came close, making landfall along the Baja California Peninsula in 2022.

Hawaii

Hurricanes are pretty rare in Hawaii, but the islands aren’t strangers to tropical systems. However, the state is only about 6,400 square miles in the vast Pacific Ocean, making it an unlikely target for frequent tropical storms and hurricanes. Since 1950, nearly every system that approached Hawaii from the east eventually weakened to a tropical storm or depression before reaching the islands due to drier, more stable air from Hawaii’s northeast, stronger wind shear near the islands and cooler ocean surface temperatures east of the Big Island.

Pacific Northwest

The ocean water off Washington and Oregon is too cold to sustain hurricanes. Hurricanes typically strengthen over warm water and require temperatures of about 80 degrees to form. Ocean temperatures along the Pacific Northwest Coast are significantly lower, with the warmest average (56 degrees) off the coast of Seattle. Travelers can enjoy their time in the Pacific Northwest without having to worry about tropical storms, as even when tough, mature hurricanes continue to track over the cooler waters, the storms typically weaken or transition to an extratropical low due to the temperatures plus the area’s wind shear.

(​MORE: Hurricanes Are Changing. Here's How)

W​hat About The Caribbean And Central America?

If you’re dead-set on a Caribbean or Central America vacation this summer, it would be best to buy travel insurance, just in case a hurricane or tropical storm is forecast for the area and you need to cancel your trip. Travelers should think about heading to the more southern Caribbean destinations, as the threat from storms is lower than those farther north.

The following Caribbean locations are least likely to experience a hurricane:

Hurricanes Ivan in 2004 and Felix in 2007 were the most recent to affect these three islands, often called the ABC Islands. “And it was more of a brush,” notes weather.com senior meteorologist Jonathan Erdman. These islands are outside of what is considered the hurricane belt, and may be a safer bet when planning a Caribbean vacation during hurricane season.

Costa Rica

Visitors can enjoy either the Caribbean side or the Pacific side of Costa Rica without having to worry too much about hurricane season. The area did experience serious flooding impacts from Hurricane Otto in November 2016, but that was a rare event.

“They can have heavy rain events, on occasion,” Erdman says. “That’s more of a threat there than a hurricane, by far.”

Panama

Though the country is nearly all coastline, Panama is too far south to receive hurricanes, and the country has only had one tropical storm in the last 50-plus years. It’s a great place to enjoy the Caribbean coast without a big threat of severe weather.

Trinidad and Tobago

According to the Trinidad and Tobago Weather Center, only two hurricanes have been recorded to have hit the islands, and only a handful of tropical storms have affected Trinidad and Tobago within the last century, making severe tropical weather relatively rare in the dual-island Caribbean nation. The islands are just off the coast of Venezuela, so its southern location is the major factor in the rarity of hurricanes and damaging tropical storms.

Want to travel internationally with a very low chance of encountering tropical weather? Below are two options where tropical storms and hurricanes are very unlikely.

United Arab Emirates

Located in the Persian Gulf, the UAE has never seen a hurricane in recorded history. Tropical weather, which in this region is often referred to as cyclones, is far more likely to hit neighboring Oman, and even then, it’s a rare occurrence. The most popular destination in the UAE is Dubai, which does not touch the Gulf of Oman where cyclones can occur.

Uruguay

Uruguay is far enough south of the equator that a hurricane is very unlikely to impact the country. However, the country has experienced subtropical weather as well as flooding and high winds. Uruguay experienced damage from Cyclone Yakecan in 2022, though those types of storms are relatively rare for the area.

M​ORE AT WEATHER.COM:

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