Visualisation
The full timeline of Atlantic hurricanes since 1851
1,973 storms across 173 years, parsed from NOAA's HURDAT2 database. The naming conventions, the intensity record, and the dates nobody's named another Katrina or Andrew.
The North Atlantic basin gets the most attention because it's the one that pummels the US Gulf Coast every year, but the historical record actually starts in 1851 — long before the term "hurricane season" existed as we use it. NOAA's HURDAT2 file is the canonical archive of every storm tracked since: lat/lon every six hours, peak winds, central pressure where measured. 1,973 storms have made it into the record.
The naming convention is younger than you think
Hurricanes weren't given personal names until 1953, and only female names were used until 1979 — when male names were finally added on the argument that the all-female list was sexist. The first male-named Atlantic hurricane was Bob, in July 1979. (It hit New Orleans as a tropical storm.) Since then, the lists rotate on a six-year cycle: 2024's names will return in 2030, with any retired names replaced.
What gets a name retired
A name is retired when a storm has been so destructive or deadly that re-using it would be insensitive. The list includes the ones you'd expect — Katrina, Sandy, Maria, Harvey, Andrew, Wilma — and some less famous to non-meteorologists (Hugo, Mitch, Ivan). 99 Atlantic names have been retired through 2024. The current record-holder for retired-name season is 2005, with five: Dennis, Katrina, Rita, Stan, and Wilma.
The Category 5s
A Category 5 hurricane is anything sustaining winds at or above 137 knots (157 mph). They are rare — fewer than 40 in the Atlantic basin in 170+ years — and they tend to come in clusters. Here are the strongest in the named-era:
| Year | Name | Peak wind |
|---|---|---|
| 1980 | ALLEN | 165 kt (189 mph) |
| 1988 | GILBERT | 160 kt (184 mph) |
| 2005 | WILMA | 160 kt (184 mph) |
| 2019 | DORIAN | 160 kt (184 mph) |
| 1998 | MITCH | 155 kt (178 mph) |
| 2005 | RITA | 155 kt (178 mph) |
| 2017 | IRMA | 155 kt (178 mph) |
| 1955 | JANET | 150 kt (172 mph) |
| 1969 | CAMILLE | 150 kt (172 mph) |
| 1977 | ANITA | 150 kt (172 mph) |
| 1979 | DAVID | 150 kt (172 mph) |
| 1992 | ANDREW | 150 kt (172 mph) |
The shape of the data
| First storm tracked | 1851 (unnamed; ended in Texas at hurricane strength) |
|---|---|
| First named storm | 1953 (Alice) |
| First male-named storm | 1979 (Bob) |
| Total storms in record | 1,973 |
| Busiest decade | 1970s (202 storms) |
| Retired names | 99 as of 2024 |
Try it yourself
The raw file is plain text — NOAA hasn't updated the format since the 1980s. Download it directly:
curl -O https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/data/hurdat/hurdat2-1851-2023-051124.txtEach storm has a header line followed by track-position lines. The format is documented in NOAA's HURDAT2 format spec. Parsing it in Python takes about thirty lines.