When Was The Last Quiet Hurricane Season?

Intense, damaging hurricanes can still happen in quieter hurricane seasons, a cautionary tale that every year can be dangerous, regardless of seasonal outlooks.

Let's take a look at some notable, even infamous, hurricanes and tropical storms that have happened in seasons with less activity.

(MORE: The Most Quiet Atlantic Hurricane Seasons)

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Ian

Stricly speaking, the 2022 hurricane season was near average for storms (14) and hurricanes (8), but was the least active by a metric called the ACE index since 2016.

It slumbered through only the third August without a single named storm since 1950.

But, as is often the case, that changed quickly in September, with hurricanes Danielle, Earl and Fiona, followed by Hurricane Ian's devastating Category 4 Florida strike.

Ian claimed at least 156 lives in the U.S., both during the storm and in its aftermath. NOAA estimated Ian's U.S. damage (corrected for inflation) was $119.6 billion, the third costliest hurricane in U.S. history and the costliest on record to hit Florida.

Andrew

The poster child for an intense hurricane landfall in a quiet season, Andrew is one of only four hurricanes to have made a mainland U.S. landfall at Category 5 intensity, when it raked through South Florida in 1992.

Andrew claimed 23 lives in the U.S. and was the nation's costliest hurricane at the time, with damage now estimated at $60.5 billion after adjusting for inflation.

Andrew was one of only seven storms to form that season, half of what's considered an average tally of storms in a present-day hurricane season.

Alicia

It's hard to imagine today an Atlantic hurricane season could only produce four storms. But that's what happened in 1983, the fewest of any hurricane season in the era of weather satellites.

Unfortunately, one of those was a billion-dollar disaster in one of America's largest cities.

Hurricane Alicia intensified from a tropical depression in the northern Gulf to a landfalling Category 3 hurricane near Galveston, Texas, in mid-August 1983. Alicia's damaging wind gusts over 100 mph shattered windows in downtown Houston skyscrapers. Nine feet of storm surge pushed onto the Gulf side of Galveston Island.

Twenty-one were killed by Alicia, with damage estimated at $9.5 billion.

Bob

Only eight storms developed in the 1991 hurricane season.

One of them was Hurricane Bob, which scraped the East Coast before plowing ashore in southern New England at Category 2 intensity.

Bob pushed an up to 8-foot surge into Rhode Island. Its winds knocked out power to an estimated 2.1 million customers from North Carolina to New England. Bob was responsible for 17 deaths in the U.S., with total damage estimated at $3.5 billion (2024 dollars).

Agnes

In a year with only seven storms, the season's first became one for the history books.

Hurricane Agnes made a Category 1 landfall in Florida. But it had a second life as a tropical storm off the Mid-Atlantic coast, then pivoted westward into the Northeast, producing massive flooding from Virginia to New York state.

A dike was breached in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, and extensive flooding was observed along the Susquehanna River, including in Elmira, New York, and Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Flooding also occurred on the James River in downtown Richmond, Virginia.

Agnes and its remnants resulted in 122 deaths and $15.9 billion (2024 dollars) in damage in the U.S., most of which came from flooding.

Other examples include Category 5 Hurricane Anita, which slammed northeast Mexico in the second least active season in 1977, and Category 3 Hurricane Emily's strike on Hispaniola in 1987.

Regardless of how quiet a season has been, that doesn't mean one storm couldn't hit your area. If it does, you'll never remember it as a quiet hurricane season.

This is why we urge you to remain prepared during this and every hurricane season, regardless of how active it is. Information about hurricane preparedness can be found here.

Jonathan Erdman is a senior meteorologist at weather.com and has been covering national and international weather since 1996. Extreme and bizarre weather are his favorite topics. Reach out to him on Bluesky, X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.