ORLANDO, Fla. – It was a tale of two seasons. The 2022 hurricane season got off to an extremely slow start, but quickly became very active in late September. Pending December development, the season will end with 14 named storms, eight of them becoming hurricanes, two of those becoming major.
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Fiona and Ian both achieved Category 4 status on the Saffir-Simpson scale.
For only the third time since 1950, a tropical cyclone, depression, storm or hurricane as they are known in the Atlantic Basin didn’t develop in the month of August. The late season push to come would go on to unfortunately tie records.
Three hurricanes formed in November, tying this season with 2001, 1887 and 1870 as the only years with three hurricanes developing in November.
From an ACE perspective, the season was a 95. The average hurricane season has a value of 123.
ACE stands for Accumulated Cyclone Energy and is the true measure of how intense a hurricane season is. ACE measures the energy used by a tropical system during its lifetime.
These statistics really highlight the phrase “it only takes one.” Even in an average year in terms of the number of storms in the season or below average in terms of intensity, there can still be incredibly destructive storms.
The season, of course, was especially destructive for Florida. Ian brought incredible devastation to southwest Florida and catastrophic flooding to Central Florida. Nicole, a large and extremely powerful category one storm brought significant storm surge to an already compromised east coast from Ian.
Ian will no doubt be retired by the World Meteorological Organization. Fiona will have a chance as well due to the destruction it brought to Puerto Rico with its catastrophic flooding.
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