The US dodged a bullet this Atlantic hurricane season

An Atlantic hurricane season defined by political and climate disasters comes to a close on November 30th.

It kicked off after DOGE’s flurry of slashes to federal agencies. Employees who stayed on endured a tumultuous year, to say the least, at the National Weather Service (NWS). A series of strong storms brewed in the Atlantic this season. But for the first time in a decade, no hurricane made landfall in the US — sparing most Americans the worst of the season.

“That was a much needed break,” Neil Jacobs, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) administrator, said in a November 25 press release.

This was a season of “striking contrast,” according to NOAA, which encompasses the National Weather Service and National Hurricane Center. After a relatively quiet start, there were sudden “bursts of intense activity.”

As far as the number of storms, it was a pretty average season with 13 named storms, five hurricanes, and four major hurricanes. Those major hurricanes, however, were doozies. Three reached Category 5 strength, with the most severe winds on the Saffir-Simpson scale. That puts this year in the second top spot on record for Category 5 storms in a single season.

Warmer sea surface temperatures provide more heat energy for tropical storms, leading to hurricanes that are more intense than they would have been without climate change. “The storms that formed just exploded in their extreme rapid intensification,” Bernadette Woods Placky, chief meteorologist and vice president for engagement at nonprofit research group Climate Central, said in a Covering Climate Now press briefing earlier this month.

And even though none made landfall in the US this year, we still saw this trend take a devastating toll. Hurricane Melissa hit Jamaica in October as one of the strongest hurricanes in the Atlantic basin to ever make landfall. Over sea, Melissa’s wind gust reached 252 miles per hour, only 1 mph short of setting the global record for the strongest ever documented. Several studies found that climate change intensified the storm, which led to at least 45 deaths in Jamaica and left a trail of destruction across Jamaica, Cuba, and Haiti.

Another Category 5 storm, Hurricane Erin, caused erosion along a vast swath of the east coast from Massachusetts to North Carolina in August, according to Woods Placky. In September, Category 5 storm Humberto and Hurricane Imelda plunged several North Carolina coastal homes into the Atlantic without ever making landfall.

Throughout the season, many NWS offices had to issue forecasts with smaller headcounts and fewer balloon launches after DOGE stormed NOAA headquarters and started downsizing. By August, the agency said it would refill many of the hundreds of roles it initially eliminated. Short staffing had led NWS to a “breaking point,” the Washington Post reported in September. And that was before the longest government shutdown in US history began in October, forcing federal forecasters and NOAA hurricane hunters flying into Hurricane Melissa to work without pay for 43 days.

The Atlantic hurricane season kicks up again in June of next year, although early spring storms have been enough to lead the World Meteorological Organization to consider moving the start date up into May in recent years.