Global Discussion : 2019 Atlantic Hurricane Season EndsAdded : Saturday at 12:00 The 2019 Atlantic hurricane season ends today and it was another busy season with the peak of tropical storm activity occurring between mid-August and October.
One of the busiest periods was early-September when three systems were on the go at once, as the below image courtesy of NOAA's GOES-East satellite shows:
By the end of the season we saw a total of 18 named storms, ending with Sebastien last week. Of those 18 storms, six developed into hurricanes of which three were "major" (Category 3 or higher). This is the fourth consecutive above-normal Atlantic hurricane season, and the only time in recorded history that four consecutive above-normal seasons occurred previously was 1998-2001 inclusive. It was a busy year over the Gulf of Mexico as five tropical cyclones formed here, matching 2003 and 1957, Three of those systems, Barry, Imelda and Nestor, made landfall across the United States, with a fourth storm, Dorian, also hitting the country but from the southeast.
The three major hurricanes this year were Dorian, Humberto and Lorenzo. Hurricane Dorian is tied with three other hurricanes — the 1935 Labor Day Hurricane, 1988’s Hurricane Gilbert and 2005’s Hurricane Wilma — as the second strongest hurricane on record in the Atlantic basin in terms of wind (185 mph).
NOAA have confirmed that during the 2019 season, their hurricane hunter aircraft and crews flew 57 missions over 430 hours, which along with the 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron of the Air Force Reserve, provided critical data that aided in storm forecasting and research. On top of this, their King Air crew collected almost 27,000 aerial images covering more than 4,300 square miles of areas affected by Hurricane Dorian to help co-ordinate the emergency response.
So that's it for another year, the 2020 hurricane season will officially begin on June 1, but this doesn't completely rule out the possibility of something cropping up between now and then.
METEOROLOGIST: BARBER |