2023 Year in Review: Atlantic Hurricanes

This hurricane season had it all – a preseason storm, a major US landfall and a highly active season. Let’s look at some of the highlights of 2023 in the Atlantic hurricane basin:

• A Storm with No Name

The Atlantic hurricane season got off to a very early start, but we just didn’t know it at the time. A coastal storm formed on January 16^th between Bermuda and the southern New England coast. At the time, the National Hurricane Center didn’t think it would become tropical, and that was largely confirmed as it scraped the Boston area with 3 to 5 inches of snow. However, analysis later in the spring indicated that this system had very much become subtropical, developing a core of thunderstorms as it climbed to a near-hurricane intensity of 70 mph.

• Fireworks in the Tropics

Although June and July saw four additional named storms, the hurricane season took a bit of a breather as the calendar turned toward the latter part of the summer. Between August 20 and September 7, a burst of hurricane activity led to the formation of nine named storms – every name on the list from “Emily” to “Margot,” including a stretch of 39 hours between August 20 and 22 that saw a record-breaking four storms forming.

Out of this torrent of tropical activity came a few notable storms. Hurricane Franklin formed in the Caribbean Sea on August 20, quickly veering northward across the Dominican Republic and Haiti as a tropical storm. Once in the Atlantic, Franklin intensified into a hurricane on the 25^th and attained major hurricane status on August 28 before peaking at 150 mph. Franklin would troll the open Atlantic for a few more days before quietly dissipating.

The season’s “intensity champion” had shown itself of this period as well. Hurricane Lee came to attention on September 5, quickly reaching hurricane intensity the next day. By September 8, Lee reached its peak intensity at a whopping 165 mph. However, Lee would retreat as quickly as it strengthened, bouncing between Category 2 and Category 3 over the next few days. After skirting Bermuda on September 12, Lee would make a beeline for the western Canadian Maritimes, making landfall in southern New Brunswick on September 16. Three deaths were blamed on Lee, two related to strong waves and one person had a tree fall on their vehicle.

• Autumn Remains Busy

Even as the hurricane season reached late September and October, it wasn’t inclined to slow down. The rapidly formed Tropical Storm Ophelia moved into the Carolinas before soaking the Mid-Atlantic in several inches of rain. Severe flooding impacted parts of New York and New England as Ophelia chugged through the region.

The season’s final storm was Hurricane Tammy, which made landfall on Barbuda before slowly moving into the open Atlantic on October 29th. Two additional systems in late October and November vied to become “Vince” with neither being successful, although the latter, Post-Tropical Cyclone #22 caused significant flooding in the Dominican Republic.

In all, 21 named storms formed this past year, the fourth-most in recorded history for the Atlantic basin. Seven of these storms reached hurricane intensity. This was above the climatological average, which is 14.4 named storms with 7 hurricanes.