The Unrelenting 2024 Atlantic Hurricane Season Finally Ends

An unusual mid-season lull was marred by explosive bookends, the deadliest mainland U.S. hurricane since Katrina, and over $100 billion in U.S. losses

Hurricane Beryl (left), Helene (middle), and Milton (right) of the 2024 hurricane season. Credit: Matthew Dominick/NASA/Colorado State University

The hyperactive 2024 Atlantic hurricane season comes to a close today, a season that leapt to one of the busiest starts on record, including Hurricane Beryl, the earliest known Category 5 hurricane, before trailing off into the traditional early September peak, but reawakening for an explosive back third that included Category 4 Hurricane Helene – the deadliest storm to affect the mainland U.S. since Katrina in 2005 – and Category 5 Milton, the most intense Gulf of Mexico hurricane in nearly two decades.

In total, the 2024 hurricane season produced 18 named storms and 11 hurricanes, with 5 Category 3 or stronger (111 mph winds or stronger) hurricanes. On average, the Atlantic churns out 14 named storms, 7 hurricanes, and 3 Category 3 or stronger hurricanes annually.

The hurricane season fell uncharacteristically silent during what’s typically the busiest stretch of the season in late August and early September. For 19 days from August 20^th to September 8^th, not a single tropical depression, storm, or hurricane passed through Atlantic basin waters, the first time that’s happened since at least 1941.

Although the hyperactive seasonal hurricane forecasts appeared in jeopardy, the season roared back to life by the end of September, and the season ended with a bang, notching more activity in October and November than any previous such period.

Most remarkably, five hurricanes struck the mainland U.S. in 2024, which ties 1893, 2004, and 2005 for the second most continental U.S. landfalls in any season going back to 1851. The most mainland U.S. landfalls observed in a single hurricane season is six, which happened in 1886, 1985, and 2020.

Helene the deadliest storm since Katrina to strike the U.S. mainland

Though the first three U.S. hurricane hits of the season – Beryl, Debby, and Francine – brought locally significant impacts, including prolonged power outages to the Houston area and extensive flooding to the New Orleans metro, it was Helene in late September that left the biggest scar on the season.

According to state and local officials, at least 243 people lost their lives in Helene across seven states, the deadliest hurricane to hit the mainland U.S. since Hurricane Katrina killed nearly 1,400 people in 2005.

Deadliest U.S. hurricanes since 1963. Helene ranks as the 4^th deadliest U.S. hurricane in at least 60 years according to tropical cyclone fatality records maintained by Dr. Jeff Masters at Yale Climate Connections. In 2023, NHC revised its official death toll for Katrina from 1,833 to 1,392, based on two studies published by the American Meteorological Society that drew on more than 1,000 medical logs on storm victims in Louisiana and Mississippi. Credit: Jeff Masters/Yale Climate Connections

The majority of deaths from Helene occurred well inland, primarily from widespread catastrophic flooding and deadly mudslides that ravaged parts of the southern Appalachians, including the Black Mountain region of western North Carolina. Over 100 deaths have been reported in North Carolina alone from Helene.

In Florida, the hurricane’s extra-wide wind field pushed over 7 feet of coastal storm surge into Tampa Bay, smashing records going back over half a century and devastating coastal communities like Treasure Island and St. Pete Beach with their worst flooding in memory.

Helene’s strong winds tore through Georgia and into South Carolina, snapping entire pine forests and causing major agricultural and timber damage. According to preliminary estimates from the University of Georgia, nearly a third of the state’s cotton crop this year was lost in Helene. With 34 deaths reported across Georgia, Helene is also the deadliest storm to hit the state since the 1898 Georgia Hurricane.

Beryl and Milton spawn historic tornado outbreaks

The 2024 hurricane season will also be remembered for the significant tornado outbreaks it unleashed early and late in the season with Hurricanes Beryl and Milton.

All told, Beryl spawned 67 tornadoes, mainly on July 8^th across eastern Texas, northern Louisiana, and southern Arkansas. According to the Storm Prediction Center, this makes Beryl the 5^th most prolific tornado-producing tropical cyclone on record and the most prolific tornado producer in nearly 20 years.

Top 10 known tropical cyclone-tornado counts based on the National Weather Service Storm Prediction Center (SPC) TC tornadoes (TCTOR) dataset since 1995, Orton (1970) for Beulah, and NCEI Storm Data for Andrew. Chart updated from Edwards and Moiser, 2022, based on national tornado data through July 2024. Credit: Roger Edwards/SPC

Three months later on October 9^th, 46 confirmed tornadoes ripped through Florida’s southern peninsula in Hurricane Milton’s outer bands, the most tornadoes ever recorded in a single day in Florida and the biggest outbreak of tornadoes in Florida from a tropical cyclone in the modernized radar record (since 1995), topping Tropical Storm Debby in 2012 which produced 25 tornadoes across the state.

Milton and Beryl produced especially strong and long-tracked tornadoes. While tornadoes aren’t uncommon in tropical cyclones, about 93% are weak (EF0/EF1) and before 2024 only five EF3 tornadoes had been recorded in tropical cyclones going back to 1995.

In 2024, Beryl and Milton spawned four EF3 tornadoes, nearly as many as in the 28 years prior combined. Among the three EF3 tornadoes confirmed after Milton was a tornado that caused severe damage in the Fort Pierce, Spanish Lakes, and Vero Beach areas on Florida’s east-central Treasure Coast, killing six people. The tornado’s winds reached an estimated 155 mph and was the deadliest single tornado produced by a tropical cyclone in the modernized radar era.

Milton spawned the deadliest outbreak of Florida tornadoes since Hurricane Ivan in 2004, which killed 6 in north Florida, and the 3rd deadliest Florida tornado outbreak behind the 1998 Kissimmee tornado outbreak that killed 42 and the March 30–31, 1962 tornado outbreak that killed 17 in Milton, Florida.

Over $100 billion in U.S. losses for the third time in the past decade

Global reinsurance firms have estimated total losses in the United States from this hurricane season – which include both direct physical damage as well as net loss from business interruptions – at over $100 billion. This makes 2024 the third season in the past decade to rack up a 9-figure price tag in the U.S., with 2017 and 2020 also surpassing the $100 billion mark at approximately $210 billion and $122 billion respectively, according to reinsurance broker Gallagher Re.

The hyperactive hurricane season, that for the first time since 2019 included two Category 5 hurricanes, was fueled by record warm waters across the deep tropical Atlantic and the lowest wind shear on record through the busiest months of the season.

Waters across the main development region of the tropical Atlantic have been at record or near-record levels for an unprecedented 18 months. Although human-caused global warming is the primary culprit of warming oceans, scientists are working to disentangle other factors that could be involved in sending the Atlantic warming to uncharted territory.

The 2025 Atlantic hurricane season begins on June 1^st.