‘Stay vigilant’: Hurricane season not over
ORLANDO, Fla. — It’s been 154 days since the start of the 2019 hurricane season, which means there’s less than 30 days to go.
Hurricane season ends on Nov. 30, and while chances are low of having a hurricane develop in the Atlantic’s cooling waters, history has shown it’s not impossible.
There have been 47 hurricanes that have developed in the month of November since the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration began keeping track 168 years ago. Five of those storms made landfall in the United States; four of them did so in Florida.
Still, monitoring the tropics in 2019 has been arduous, and many may feel that now is the time to stop paying attention, said WOFL’s meteorologist Jayme King.
“I’ve noticed on social media a lot of people are just done with the season, and are convinced that nothing is going to happen,” King said. “But the Gulf is still warm, and storms can still develop down there.”
Many parts of the United States are experiencing cold fronts, which could have an impact on the hurricane season, King said.
“Fronts can either act as a magnet to tropical systems or as a bouncer refusing them entry,”
King said. “A trough develops over the central part of the country and it could magnetize a storm toward Florida, or it could push it away.”
Either way it helps to be vigilant for one month more, King said.
The last time a hurricane took shape in November was in 2016 with Category 3 Hurricane Otto, which formed on Nov. 20 in the Caribbean and made landfall in Nicaragua and cut through Costa Rica.
It was the first hurricane in 20 years to cross Central America into the Eastern Pacific basin. Ultimately,
Otto was directly responsible for 18 deaths and displaced 500 people. An estimated $15 million worth of damage was done to the coffee industry.
The last November hurricane to take aim at Florida was Category 4 Hurricane Paloma, which formed Nov. 5, 2008, in the southwestern Caribbean.
It slowly meandered into the panhandle on Nov. 13 as a tropical depression and dropped record rainfall on the state, but all of that was after it did its most damage cutting across Cuba as a Category 4 major hurricane, before pulling a loop-de-loop back over the island as a weakened storm on its way into the Gulf of Mexico. It destroyed nearly 1,500 homes and caused nearly $300 million in damages, the NHC reported.
Perhaps the most notorious November storm came in the form of the Yankee Hurricane of 1935.
Before hurricanes were given proper names, the storm earned the title of “Yankee” having developed in the north and then traveling south like a New York “snow bird,” according to the NOAA.
A large, high-pressure ridge to the north of the system pushed the tropical storm westward, it then quickly developed and veered south surprising Floridians and meteorologists. The Yankee storm made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane on Nov. 4 in Miami.
Luckily, damage was kept to $5.5 million as construction standards had been raised after the Category 4 Great Miami Hurricane of 1926, the NOAA said. The early warning system also appeared to be effective as only five died as a result of the storm.