November 30 officially closes the 2024 Atlantic hurricane season. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be storms after that date, as history has shown.
As defined in 1965, the “official” Atlantic hurricane season runs from June to November each year. According to the Hurricane Research Division of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), that six-month period includes more than 97% of the Atlantic basin’s hurricane activity.
As is often the case in life, there are exceptions. Hurricanes can form after November as well as before June. NOAA's database records 13 hurricanes forming in December since 1851.
The most recent such storm was an unnamed subtropical storm in early December 2013. Four of those 13 storms became hurricanes, the most recent being Typhoon Lili in 1984, which struck just five days before Christmas.
Five other hurricanes formed in January. Two of them were recent storms, including an unnamed subtropical storm off the US East Coast in 2023 and the freakish Hurricane Alex in 2016 in the eastern Atlantic — the strongest January Atlantic hurricane on record.
Some of the storms that appear this December and January tend to stay over the vast Atlantic Ocean, far from land.
But some storms have had an impact. Hurricane Alex made landfall in the Azores as a tropical storm in January 2016.
Tropical Storm Olga caused deadly flooding in Hispaniola in December 2007.
The day after New Year's Day 1955, Hurricane Alice passed through some areas of the northern Leeward Islands, producing 130 km/h winds and heavy rain.
NOAA's Atlantic Hurricane Database Reanalysis Project found that a February tropical storm in the Atlantic basin caused crop damage in South Florida on Groundhog Day, 1952.
The project also discovered a hurricane in early March 1908 that hit the Leeward Islands, causing damage to homes and crops.
Typically, there is too much wind shear, drier, colder air, and colder water for hurricanes to develop later in the hurricane season.
“Typically, storms that form later in the season come from non-tropical sources, including upper-level lows and cold fronts,” National Hurricane Center senior forecaster Eric Blake told weather.com in 2017.
For Vietnam, the Vietnam National Center for Hydro-Meteorological Forecasting said that from September 2024 to now, there have been 7 storms in the East Sea.
From December 2024 to February 2025, the forecast of storm/tropical depression activity in the East Sea and its impact on Vietnam's mainland is likely to be approximately the same as the multi-year average of about 1.4 storms/tropical depressions, and about 0.2 storms will make landfall.
Storms/tropical depressions, if making landfall, are likely to concentrate in the Central region and southern provinces.
From March to May 2025, storm/tropical depression activity in the East Sea will be at a level equivalent to the multi-year average of 0.5 storms/tropical depressions, with no landfall.
