Every Landfalling November hurricane on record hit Florida
Hurricane season spans six months of the year – from June 1 to November 30.
The good news is that the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season officially ends in two weeks!
The bad news is that every landfalling November hurricane on record hit Florida.
The most recent November hurricane to impact the panhandle was Hurricane Ida (2009).
While officially making landfall on Dauphin Island, Alabama, Ida took a hard westerly-turn upon reaching the shore and transversed the entire first congressional district of Florida.
Ida (2009) reached Category 3 strength in the Gulf of Mexico on November 9, 2009 before rapidly losing windspeed and making landfall as an extra-tropical cyclone on November 10, 2009. "Ida" has since been retired as a hurricane name following Hurricane Ida's (2021) devastating impact in Louisiana.*
Hurricane Kate (1985) struck Mexico Beach on November 21, 1985 as a Category 3 hurricane, though it reached Category 4 wind speeds over the Gulf the very morning that it hit.
At least three other storms hit Northwest Florida during November: Unnamed hurricane* (1861), Unnamed hurricane (1904) and Hurricane Paloma (2008).
While many people may not think of November as an active hurricane month, if you compare November to May, you’ll see why hurricane season starts and ends when it does.
Only three storms on record have made landfall from December 1-April 30, and each were direct hits to Florida in 1925, 1952 and 2007 (Olga).
*NOTE: Hurricane names are retired by a committee each year who review the strength, impact and damage caused by each storm and decide whether to remove that name from the rotation. Hurricane Ida was retired after devastating Louisiana in 2021. Read more about how and why hurricanes are named here.
*NOTE: Modern naming of hurricanes started in 1953, thus no hurricanes before that year have names. Hurricane names were exclusively female until 1978, when they began rotating male and female names every other letter of the alphabet.
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