Looking Back at the 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season

The official end of the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season is here. The season broke a number of records, mostly due to the atypically warm ocean waters. Here is a look back at this unprecedented tropical weather season.

Wrapping Up the 2024 Hurricane Season

The Atlantic hurricane season comes to a close on Saturday, November 30. Well before the first tropical weather event spun up, forecasters were warning that the season would likely be one for the record books. These predictions came to fruition when the earliest Category 5 storm came to life in the basin.

Tropical weather experts grew increasingly more concerned as the start of the season on June 1 inched closer. The unseasonably warm ocean waters were the biggest culprit for this concern. Not only did forecasters predict a higher number of named storms due to these warm waters but they also warned about the higher threat of the storms going through the process of rapid intensification just before coming ashore.

As it turned out, the predictions were right on the money.

History was first made when Hurricane Beryl formed in the Caribbean early in the season, becoming the earliest Category 5 storm on the record books in the Atlantic Ocean. Beryl reached this designation on July 1 with winds hitting speeds of 165 mph. Hurricane Beryl eventually hit Texas as a Category 1 storm on July 8, triggering widespread power outages to nearly 3 million customers. The Houston area was hit particularly hard with some customers remaining in the dark and without air conditioning for over a week.

Hurricane Helene was distinguished as the most devastating storm of the season, making landfall on September 26 along the Florida Gulf Coast as a major Category 4 hurricane. While Helene unleashed mass destruction across the Sunshine State, it will best be remembered for its impacts on the southern Appalachians.

Experts estimate that Helene dropped 42 trillion gallons of moisture over the southeastern U.S., creating a mass flooding event that changed the landscape of western North Carolina. There were over 200 deaths blamed on Helene, making it the second only to Hurricane Katrina for fatalities in the U.S. in half of a century.

Helene caused economic losses between $225 and $250 billion. This eye-popping amount puts Helene in the record books as one of the most damaging storms in the history of the country. To put that into perspective, the historic Hurricane Katrina caused $320 billion in damages.