ORLANDO, Fla. – Hurricane season has officially ended, but that doesn’t mean development can’t still happen. While it is rare, it’s not impossible.
Since 1966, the start of the satellite era, there have been seven named storms that formed in December.
There have been 12 storms active in the month of December, but five of them developed before the season officially ended on Nov. 30 and carried over to December.
None of those storms made landfall in the continental U.S., but Puerto Rico was impacted by Tropical Storm Olga in 2007. The remnants of Olga did bring heavy rain to parts of Florida.
Going back to the start of recordkeeping in the late 1800s, only 31 storms of tropical storm force or stronger were active in December.
Of those 31 storms, only 16 developed in December.
Of those 16 that developed in December, two became hurricanes, reaching Category 1 intensity.
There has only been one landfall in the continental U.S. in December.
That one time, however, was Florida with an unnamed tropical storm making landfall on the Gulf Coast on Dec 1. 1925.
The storm itself developed in November but made an unprecedented December landfall in the Sunshine State.
With the water turning cooler due to winter in the Northern Hemisphere, tropical systems, of course, become less probable. With cold fronts sweeping across the U.S. becoming much more common, impacts to the lower 48 are even more rare.
Even though storms developing in January would count toward next season, development becomes even more unlikely. There have only been four storms since records began that developed in January.
The most recent was Hurricane Alex in 2016.
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