May’s Hurricane History
Bottom Line: While hurricane season doesn’t technically start until June, after six consecutive years of named May storms, the National Hurricane Center will start the official tracking on May 15th this year - which incidentally is the official start of the Pacific hurricane season. Something to be mindful of is that there’s not a magical hurricane season switch that gets flipped on June 1st and turned off November 30th.Those dates are somewhat arbitrary. Especially with the recent trend of “pre-season” activity.
Tropical activity during the month of May is common and in recent years has been about as active as June. This includes having more named storms (3) in May, than in June (2) over the past two years. Last year we had two named May systems in route to our record season with 30 named storms.
Historically, dating back to the original record keeping in 1851, we’ve averaged about one named storm every five years during May. That includes 27 tropical storms and four hurricanes. In fact, some years the season has kicked off even earlier. We’ve had recorded named storms every month of the year, including two hurricanes in January and one in March.
While it’s not yet “officially” hurricane season, being prepared now essentially makes as much sense as being prepared in June. The storms don’t choose specific dates on calendars the way we do. Historically nearly 3% of named storms and hurricanes happen before hurricane season officially starts.
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