Local News

2021 Hurricane Season Coming To An End

November 23, 2021 / 9:20 PM EST / CBS Miami

Miami (CBSMiami) – Dissipating in early November, tropical storm Wanda marked the 21st named storm of the 2021 Atlantic hurricane season.

It's the second year in a row that the season exhausted the list of storm names.

Unlike 2020, however, it looks like Wanda will be the final named storm of the season with no activity expected for the final week of the season.

Elsa and Fred were the only 2 storms to threaten South Florida.

Of the 21 named storms, it was only two that impacted South Florida. Elsa and Fred, both tropical storms while near South Florida, were mostly rain makers and gave the area brief tropical-storm force winds.

Relative to the active season, the impacts from this season could be considered minimal to none. This allowed emergency staff in Florida to continue to address the impacts from past storms.

"We're still working Hurricane Michael. We're still working Hurricane Irma, Matthew, Hermine, Dorian and so on," said Kevin Guthrie, director of the state Division of Emergency Management. "So, yeah, it was good for us to be able to work on some of those past disasters and get them working towards closing out."

Florida has seen several close calls in the past few seasons, but a wobble followed by a slight change in track direction kept these major storms away from South Florida. Some may call it luck, but Guthrie added by quoting National Hurricane Center Director Ken Graham, "Wobbles matter. Little wobbles matter."

This year was the sixth consecutive above-average storm season and came after Florida suffered historic strikes from Irma in 2017 and Michael in 2018. But this year is essentially the third consecutive season without a hurricane directly causing massive damage to Florida.

"It only takes one big storm to cause problems in the state of Florida," Guthrie said. "This is not going to be the norm. We are Florida. We get hit by hurricanes. It is going to happen."

Hurricane Ida was a major hurricane that impacted New Orleans on the anniversary of Hurricane Katrina.

This season included seven hurricanes with four of those becoming major hurricanes reaching Category 3 strength.

Louisiana was hit hard again when Hurricane Ida made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane on the 16-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina's landfall.

When Ana formed on May 22, forecasters recorded the seventh consecutive year which a system emerged before the official season start date on June 1.

Given this trend, the National Hurricane Center starts issuing outlooks on May 15 instead of June 1. There are discussions to change the actual start of the hurricane season, but for now they remain just that, discussions.

At this point, the area is focused on the end of the hurricane season, November 30. At least for now we can rest easy knowing there are six months to go before the start of the 2022 Atlantic hurricane season.