Even with officially two months left in hurricane season, State Climatologist Barry Keim said if we can get through the next few weeks without a named storm in the Gulf, it’s highly likely Louisiana will be unscathed this season. Statistically, the latest storm on record to threaten the Bayou State was Halloween 28 years ago.
“So, we just have to make it for one more month, two more weeks for major hurricanes and then I’d say until the end of the month for hurricanes in general,” said Keim.
So far, this Atlantic Hurricane Season there have been 18 named storms; six were hurricanes and three were major hurricanes. The average is 14 named storms.
And now that we’ve reached the next to last month of hurricane season, Keim said on average one named storm forms in the North Atlantic Basin in October…
“However, thinking back just as recently as 2020, we had both Hurricanes Delta and Zeta make landfall here, just in Louisiana, in that same year in the month of October,” said Keim.
Zeta made landfall as late as October 28, 2020, and in 1985 Hurricane Juan showed up late to the party and was still hanging around the Louisiana coast on Halloween day.
Keim said even with a few late-season named storms in our history we’re not out of the woods just yet…
“No time to put our guard down and if we can just hang on for a couple of weeks, I’d say we’re not likely to see a major hurricane,” said Keim.
For the last 175 years, Keim said a hurricane has never made landfall in Louisiana during the month of November. Hurricane Season ends November 30th.
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