5 Years Ago, 3 Storms Formed In 6 Hours During A Very Strange, Different 2020 Hurricane Season

Entire Greek Alphabet Retired After Atlantic Hurricane Season

September 2025 in the Atlantic hurricane season has been weirdly quiet, but five years ago couldn't have been more different, punctuated by a stunning rash of new storms on Sept. 18, 2020.

2020 Was Already Off The Charts

First, consider what the 2020 hurricane season had already delivered by mid-September.

Twenty-one storms and eight hurricanes had formed, seven more storms than an average full season. It's also three times the number of storms so far in 2025 through Gabrielle.

Isaias had raked up the East Coast with damaging winds in early August. Three weeks later, Laura pummeled southwest Louisiana with a record-tying strong Louisiana landfall by wind speed. For a time, Laura and Marco's forecast cones crossed. Sally just had finished soaking the northern Gulf Coast for days in mid-September.

On Sept. 14, five tropical cyclones of at least tropical depression strength were active at one time, something that had been documented only once before in the Atlantic Basin.

The Weirdest Tropical Day

On the morning of Sept. 18, 2020, the National Hurricane Center's five-day tropical outlook map shown below was typically busy for the time of year, with a couple of active systems and several other areas that could develop.

If there was anything strange about that map, it was the small circle off the coast of Portugal in the far northeast corner of the map.

Later that morning, it started getting more weird.

First, Tropical Storm Wilfred formed at 11 a.m. ET from the area that was the orange-colored blob in the map above.

Little did we know we'd have to dust off our Greek just 90 minutes later.

At 12:30 p.m. ET, the NHC started advisories on Subtropical Storm Alpha, just off the coast of Portugal. It was so far northeast both the name "Alpha" and the storm symbol were partially cut off of NHC's map. Alpha would make landfall north of Lisbon just over 4 hours later.

To top it off, T.D. Twenty-Two became Tropical Storm Beta in the Gulf at 5 p.m. ET that afternoon.

That's three new storms in six hours, a frenetic tropical hiccup unlike anything I had experienced in my career.

Compare the map below with the one above and, frankly, any recent NHC map from the 2025 season. (Note: Despite the 2 p.m. timestamp in the map, this map was updated with the upgrade to Tropical Storm Beta at 5 p.m. ET that afternoon.)

The 2020 hurricane season smashed all-time records for named storms (30), and those that made a U.S. landfall (12).

After going nine letters deep into the Greek alphabet for additional storm names in the rest of the 2020 season, the World Meteorological Organization's hurricane committee retired using the Greek alphabet in lieu of an alternate name list starting in 2021.

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.