Today’s entry: You mentioned the last hurricane to make landfall in Palm Beach County was in 2005. Given all of the hurricane hysteria in news media, especially in the name of environmental politics in recent years, how often have hurricanes actually hit South Florida?
Bottom Line: Alright, so about hurricanes in South Florida. Yep, it’s been a while. And yep, I get as annoyed by weather hype as you. It’s a primary reason I bring you the monthly hurricane history at the start of each month of hurricane season. Rather than speaking about a specific county in South Florida, I’m going to break down the information for the region. After all, as most who’ve been through them can attest to, aside from an outlier so specifically devastating as Hurricane Andrew, it’s often splitting hairs as to what county specifically takes the direct landfall in terms of overall impact.
Given that the northeast quadrant of hurricanes are often the strongest, it’s not been uncommon for those to the northeast of landfall to experience greater impacts than those in the direct path of the eye. Incidentally, insurance companies also quantify Florida hurricane risk in regions.
The Atlantic Hurricane season record-keeping officially began in 1851. While overall numbers of storms and hurricanes were doubtlessly undercounted in the pre-satellite technology days, the record-keeping for Florida landfalls is sound and well documented. Entering the 2021 hurricane season here’s how many hurricanes have made landfall in Florida by region:
- Northwest: 66 (14 major)
- Southwest: 49 (17 major)
- Southeast: 49 (16 major)
- Northeast: 26 (1 major)
Straight away it’s evident Florida’s Gulf Coast has been far more hurricane-prone than Florida’s east coast. Historically a hurricane has been 35% more likely to strike Florida’s gulf coast as opposed to our coast. Also, it should be noted that numerous hurricanes have been counted in multiple regions as they made landfall in multiple regions of the state while retaining hurricane status. A total of 120 different hurricanes have made landfall somewhere in Florida over the past 170 years.
Something notable is how below average the hurricane impact has been to Southeast Florida since 2005. According to historical averages, we would have had 4.3 hurricanes make landfall over the previous 15 years with between one to two of those being majors. Instead, it’s been zero, with only one, hurricane Irma in 2017, bringing hurricane-force conditions to the region. In fact, we’re currently within the second-longest window without a hurricane landfall in southeast Florida over the past 170 years at a minimum. Perception and reality are often in two different places. That’s proved to be especially true historically for Southeast Florida.
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