October marks the start of the final leg of Atlantic hurricane season, and although activity begins to slowly wind down, recent years have shown us impactful hurricanes can still strike the U.S.
The breeding ground for storms begins to contract late in the season: In October, the most favored area for tropical storms and hurricanes to form shifts westward toward the western Caribbean Sea, eastern Gulf of Mexico and far western Atlantic Ocean. That's because the "Cape Verde" portion of the hurricane season, featuring the development of African easterly waves in the eastern Atlantic Ocean, fades.
Hurricane season usually quiets down even more as we head into November, especially for the U.S.
Hurricane formations become fewer through the end of the season: The Atlantic has had 233 hurricanes form in October since 1851, according to NOAA. That works out to an average of a little more than one hurricane forming during the month each year.
The most hurricanes to form in October was five in 2010, although 2020 came close with four.
November's number of Atlantic hurricanes drops off sharply, with just 56 total in 171 years of record keeping.
19 hurricanes have made a U.S. landfall in October since 1950: A majority of those landfalls occurred from Louisiana eastward to Florida and the Southeast coast. Florida has the most landfalls in the month with 10 since 1950, followed by Louisiana with six.
It becomes more difficult for hurricanes to make landfall farther north in October as the upper-level wind pattern changes and the jet stream slides farther south. Superstorm Sandy hit the Northeast in late-October 2012, but it was no longer classified as a hurricane when it pushed ashore along the New Jersey coast.
November U.S. hurricane landfalls are extremely rare, with just four ever documented.
Recent years have shown the impacts hurricanes can still bring to the U.S. late in the season: Since 2016, Hurricanes Matthew, Nate, Michael, Delta, Zeta and Nicole have all made a U.S. landfall in October or November.
Michael had the most devastating impacts of those recent hurricanes because it was an extremely rare Category 5 U.S. landfall in the Florida Panhandle on Oct. 10, 2018.
Last year, Hurricane Nicole made landfall in Florida on Nov. 10. It was the first U.S. hurricane landfall in November since Kate struck the Panhandle in 1985.
