ST. PETERSBURG, Fla — By now, we all know that the peak of hurricane season is between mid-August and mid-October — but November is still part of the season!
That has been true this November, with three hurricanes within the first 10 days of the month: Lisa, Martin and now Nicole all reached Category 1 hurricane strength.
Nicole is the only one of those three to impact the United States, making landfall on Wednesday, Nov. 9, near Vero Beach. That landfall as a Category 1 storm is in rare company.
Since the start of record keeping, there have only been two other hurricanes that made landfall in Florida. The first was back in 1935 when a storm with the nickname "The Yankee Hurricane" made landfall near Miami in early November.
The second was Hurricane Kate in 1985, which made landfall as a Category 2 hurricane in late November near Mexico Beach in the Panhandle — the strongest storm to hit the United States in November.
Most storms in November tend to be a tropical storm or a weak hurricane like we have seen this year. But in 2020, we saw two major hurricanes make landfall in Central America, proving that we can't let our guard down even as the season tends to calm down in November.
In 2020, hurricanes Eta and Iota became the 13th and 14th hurricanes of the season. Those two storms reached Category 4 strength and made landfall in Nicaragua with winds over 140 mph. Combined, they produced more than $9.5 billion dollars in damage.