Record hurricane season with 30 storms comes to end

MONTGOMERY, Ala. — A record-setting Atlantic hurricane season that saw the highest number of named storms officially came to a close Monday.

The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration said the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season set multiple records. It produced 30 named storms surpassing the previous record of 28 in 2005. There were so many that the list of 21 conventional names was exhausted and the Greek alphabet was used for the second time in history.

The season also saw the second-highest number of hurricanes on record after 13 of the storms reached hurricane status. There were six major hurricanes with top winds of 111 mph or greater. NOAA said an average season has 12 named storms, six hurricanes and three become major hurricanes.

This season also set a record for the number of storms that made landfall in the continental United States with 12 storms.

“The 2020 Atlantic hurricane season ramped up quickly and broke records across the board,” Neil Jacobs, acting NOAA administrator, said in a news release.

Five of the 12 storms that hit the United States this year made landfall in Louisiana.

“Today marks the end of the 2020 hurricane season. It’s been a hard one, but if we’ve learned anything from the five storms that came ashore this year it’s that the people of Louisiana are resilient and by working together, there’s no challenge too great for us to overcome,” Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards wrote on Twitter.